Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2017

The Conundrum of Memorization

Chances are that your schooling included a lot of memorization.  You might be familiar with the cycle of cram-regurgitate-forget.  In my 19 years of formal education I know I did my share.  I don’t like to brag (which always indicates there’s a brag coming…) but when you combined my cram-regurgitate-forget methodology with my ability to see through the test question, it was championship level.  The problem with this brag is that it doesn’t seem like anything to brag about.  But come on, Kathy, you have those shiny diplomas to show for it!  Sorry, alternative voice but I’d give away those diplomas, if such a thing were possible (and if I knew where they were…).   All this memorization exhaustion might make you, as a parent, reluctant to require memorization from your kids.    I know the feeling, you want all the joy of learning to trump the natural desire to avoid difficult things like memorization. If you just show enough reasons in real life that multiplication facts are usefu