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 useful, then your kids will want to memorize them and they will come begging you for help.  Right?  Surely that’s how the good parents do it.  Good luck with that.

How to differentiate the voices in your head?  The one saying, “I really think he ought to know this.” And the other one saying, “If I make him learn this then he will hate it and I will have ruined his love of learning.”  If you’ve got a particularly pernicious inner voice it might even go so far as to say, “…and he will hate me.”   Here’s a tried and true way to decide what is worth memorizing and what isn’t.  Is this thing (set of information or poetic masterpiece) worth memorizing for life?  Will this serve her 10 years from now?  If you’re not sure, you can ask yourself another question.  Is this information (or skill or document) foundational to other things I want my child to master?

There is some memorization that is just crazy stupid when Google is at our fingertips.  Memorizing the date of the Battle of Lexington, or how many casualties resulted, would bring a natural aversion with it.  When will I need this? is a very reasonable question.  But, having a general sense of when the Revolutionary War happened is going to give context for everything from understanding how long our country has been around to not sounding like an idiot on Watter’s World (I’m joking! I’m joking!). 

Having some basic information in store to draw on makes it possible for us to make connections and see patterns.  In other words, it allows us to think. Let’s not make the mistake of switching out engaging and meaningful education for rote memorization.  But let’s also not send our children out into the world without the ability to do basic mental math or thinking that you lived during the Civil War, just sayin’...