Differing philosophies about memorization

[PeachyDoodle]

I happened to find myself in an interesting conversation the other day with a group of moms, none of whom I know very well. With the exception of myself, all are current or former professional educators. Somehow the discussion turned to homeschooling (two of us -- myself and one of the others -- are homeschoolers; the remaining three are not).

 

While not being downright disparaging of homeschooling in general, one mom took a jab at Classical Conversations, particularly its emphasis on memory work. She described a child she knew who "went around chanting 'E=MC²' and even had a little song about it." Then she commented something along the lines of, "Those of us with a background in education know that's exactly backwards -- anybody can teach little kids to memorize anything, but they don't have a clue what it means, so it's useless!"

 

I realize Classical Conversations is a hot-button issue in some circles, but I truly don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about it. I include that here only for context, as it's not really the issue. This mom and preschool director's comment flies in the face of what I have understood to be a core tenet of classical education: that memorization (especially in the grammar stage), even without full understanding, sets the child up for fleshing out that understanding in later stages. I believe SWB describes this as being like pegs on which the child can hang future knowledge.

 

These two opinions seems to be at polemic odds with one another. Not having a background in educational philosophy myself, I'm interested in hearing opinions on the subject. Is memorization in the early years, without full understanding of the information, an important foundation? Developmentally inappropriate? Neither/both? Why/why not?

 

What say the Hive? :D

 

 

[zarabellesmom]

Well, I'm a little biased because my daughter has working memory issues. That said, we don't spend a lot of time memorizing at our house. I have found in my own experience that I learn better when I understand something. It is then that I have mastered the information. Obviously, some things have to be memorized (math facts) but lots of things other people spend time memorizing are lost on me. The periodic table for instance. I have a minor in chemistry and worked in a lab for years before having kids. My husband is a chemist and a chemical engineer. Neither of us has ever made an effort to memorize the periodic table, though lots of that information has been internalized through years of use. It is also information that is easily accessible in any chemical laboratory. Why spend hours memorizing? I think there is a place for memorization, but I also think it is overdone in some homeschool environments. IMO

[shawthorne44]

I started out vaguely anti-memorization.  Mainly based on lots of complaining from my parents on the useless memory work they had to do in school.  

Then when I was in the phase "Read every homeschooling book in the large well-stocked library" in one of those giant homeschooling books where there was a different author for each chapter.  There was a chapter on memorization techniques.  In the intro the author pointed out that small kids seem to crave memorization.  Since it isn't done in school very much at all, kids memorize ad jingles and TV theme songs.  That truth converted me to pro-memorization.   In hind-sight, the memorization my parents were complaining about was the high school level.  All this thought process was pre-exposure to WTM.  WTM totally clicked for me.  

 

I wish I'd been given more memory work.  Maybe then I'd know how many days are in each month, and I wouldn't need a state abbreviation chart posted at my desk.  Somewhere in a SWB writing she mentioned still using a certain grammar memory jingle and I thought, "Boy, I wish I had that in my brain".  

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I'm pro-memorization as well.  But I do think it's a *little* silly to teach E equals mc2 to a child who can't yet grasp that.  It's not like it's a hard thing to learn later on.  There is so much ifnromation that is ACCESSIBLE to grammar school aged kids that could be memorized.  PP mentioned grammar, there is also poetry, a historical timeline, basic science concepts (NOT mc squared, but perhaps the 5 classes of vertebrates and their characteristics, classes of insects, and a million other things...), useful information (states and capitals, geography of the world, presidents and their terms...)

 

I blogged about this recently:

Hooks

Bloom's Taxonomy

 

Both posts go into a lot of detail! 

[Kiara.I]

I don't know whether I think that memorized information, not understood, is an important foundation.

I do think the memorizing is an important foundation (as the child is able, of course, like all things.)

 

Memorizing used to be a normal way that humans functioned.  Oral tradition was how information got passed down, and you certainly couldn't take notes of things to read later in many societies.  The capacity for memorization is large, but we let it atrophy in our society, because of the tools we have.  Is that good or bad?  Or completely irrelevant?  How does it change us as people to not memorize?

 

So I'm not a huge fan of having children memorize things that they *cannot* understand yet (E=mc^2, for instance) but there are plenty of things that they can memorize that they *do* understand, or at least understand at a surface level--poetry, religious texts, names of the birds that visit their feeder, names of the provinces or states in their country and capitals of them, names of countries in the world...(although you could argue that for most very young children, the whole concept of a "country" is a bit nebulous.  ;) )

[fourisenough]

I guess I fall somewhere in-between on this issue. As you can see in my sig, I participate in CC with my 10 year-old. I think their memory work is valuable to a child who can understand it. I have a very bright, quick memorizer. I teach every concept before having her memorize it. Using library books, BrainPop videos, online demonstrations, our encyclopedias, etc. I make sure to give context to & flesh out every little bit of the memory work before or as it is introduced. It doesn't take much time and in some cases we've already come across it somewhere (in our grammar book, science curriculum, or in SOTW). We will finish our third and final cycle next year. I couldn't imagine making her go through the cycles more than once though. I think 3-5th grades or 4-6th grades is the ideal time for this.

 

Last year, my youngest daughter did CC with us and IMO is was totally age-inappropriate. It wouldn't have been possible or even desirable to teach her most of the memory work at that age. She was simultaneously bored and overwhelmed by our mornings at CC. I'm not sure whether she'll participate with us next year as a 6-year old- only if I can't make other child care arrangements.

 

So, in summary, depending on the child's age I either heartily agree with the teacher's position or firmly disagree.

[musicianmom]

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Edited May 22, 2022 by musicianmom

[Catherine]

It occurs to me that one big reason that professional educators would not perceive the value of memorization is that they only have students for one year.  I think the benefits accrue over a longer period of time for many students so the difference in one year would be hard to see. 

 

I do think memorization is very valuable.  I have one (of three) children who found memorization much more difficult than the others, when he was grammar-stage, but now that he is older, he has grown into it and is very good at it.  I don't know if practice made perfect, or just getting older helped.  He just got kudos for playing his entire suzuki book 4 from memory, for his end-of-book adjudication. So I assume that may not be typical?

[Momof3littles]

We've found it valuable. We do our own mishmash of memorization, but we do consider it important.  One of my kids seems to particularly enjoy the challenge and is very quick with memorizing poems and the like.  She gets a lot of personal satisfaction from it.  She's often much faster at it than her 5th grade brother, and she doesn't let him forget it.

 

Years later my kids do sometimes reference the long list of memorized prepositions they learned.  They get that it is a tool and understand that a list like that has limitations and they have to truly understand what a prep is.  But they still reference it.  We were doing FLL then and hadn't moved to MCT at that point, and at the time I wondered if it was worthwhile.  The best part is that they thought it was going to be impossible, and in short order managed to learn it and retain it for years.  I think there's something to be said for those experiences periodically.

 

I also think there's something beautiful about having a little anthology of lovely poems in your head long term.   I feel like my children may be able to draw on in tough times when they need something beautiful in their lives.  Perhaps that's silly of me, but that's how I feel :)

[maize]

She is a preschool teacher/director? I'll bet her students memorize the ABC's without a thorough understanding of alphabetic writing systems and phonics--in fact, they probably learn to sing the song before learning to identify all the letters. They learn the names of colors without understand principles of light waves. They learn to call a shape a square without an understanding of right angles. They learn "up" and "down" without an understanding of gravity.

 

Context and understanding are things that continue to grow and deepen over a lifetime. Ideally yes I think things memorized should have some contextual basis, but memorizing what you don't currently understand is not going to hurt anyone either.

[Coco_Clark]

We always have steady memory work going, but no, I do not have them memorize anything they can't understand, or really anything out of context of what we are already studying.  Maybe this is because my children are still young but there is SO MUCH useful, pertinent to daily life, information to memorize, why waste that time and energy on something like E=MC²?  Or for that matter, a list of the Pharaohs of Egypt (as suggested in TWTM)?  

 

My kids (5 and 7) have memorized general information like our address and phone number, everyone in our families birthday, the seasons, the months of the year, the days of the week...  They have memorized things important to our faith like certain prayers, psalms, and creeds...  They have memorized skip counting by 2, 5, and 10 and we will progress through all the numbers <12...  They have each memorized a few poems they particularly enjoyed, and a few common-knowledge science facts related to what we were studying in science at the time, like the names of a dozen bones and muscles, the names of the planets, the names and locations of the continents and oceans.

 

Like I said.  My children are still very young.  Maybe I will feel differently when they are older and already HAVE all the useful type knowledge and the choice will be obscure facts or nothing at all.  But I run into things that I personally wish I knew often enough that I kind of doubt that day will come.  

[Arcadia]

Things memorise without being used gets forgotten fast. I am more in favor of memorising when the needs arise. For example my older has German vocabulary to memorise for his outside class. The vocabulary list is of commonly used words so the bulk of the words would be use in daily conversations.

 

I don't see any harm with memory work, it's just not a priority for me for my kids.

[regentrude]

I see a distinct difference between memorizing poetry or music and memorizing fact lists. The mechanism by which this is accomplished is very different, and the retention is vastly different.

I can still sing every Russian song I learned between 4th and 6th grade, every poem I memorized in middle school.

I can still play from memory the last violin pieces I studied in 6th grade (after that I quit and did not touch a violin for over 25 years)

I can, however, not recall the list of the dates for Napoleon's battles I memorized at the same age when I was infatuated with Napoleon.

 

Things that are memorized through rhythm, sound (poetry, songs) or muscle memory (violin pieces) are retained long term - fact collections will be forgotten if they are not periodically used.

Like a previous poster, I see no value in memorizing the periodic table. Familiarity will come easily with use.

Memorization is not a substitute for understanding. A child may enter K without knowing the abc song and still be the first in the class to read fluently after a few weeks - because memorizing the abc song does absolutely nothing for reading. Ditto with many other things.

 

There are few facts that I consider essential to memorize. The times tables is a notable exception; extremely useful.

[Farrar]

Memorization without context or understanding is not anything children will remember long term without keeping it up so I do think that's mostly useless. Practicing using your memory is sort of useful, but why memorize a list of dates or names that you won't have a chance to use for years? The time you might use trying to keep it up would be better spent.

 

Memorization with context, such as memorizing the times tables after learning what multiplication is and then continuing to use them in increasingly complex math problems is super useful.

 

Memorizing poetry or music or the like, to me, is a memory exercise that helps one learn to really appreciate the language, the art, the meaning and structure behind them. I think that's also useful, even if it fades from memory over time, the deeper experience of the art is there.

 

Knowing more context about the world in general and having those pegs of knowledge onto which to hang more knowledge is also really useful. But I don't think you can get them unless you understand what you know. I mean, if you just know the list of the kings of England, who cares if you learn about Oliver Cromwell if you don't know anything else about those kings. It's not going to mean anything more to you than learning about Genghis Khan. It will be all new information. I think public school educators tend to vastly underestimate the importance of that context. They say, you can just look it up! But that's not really true. To fluently read something about Cromwell for understanding and keep it in your head, you need to have something in your head to hang it on. What's England? What was the time period? What was the government? What is a revolution? What was the religion? And so forth. It's not memorization exactly, but it's having things in your memory that build a framework.

 

Side note... I think there is something innate in people, or maybe just in Americans?... that makes us recoil from children chanting random facts in unison. Or is that just me? Anyway, I think that's why some people find the CC memory work a little... off putting.

[dragonflyer]

We memorize things that are beautiful and useful.  My children are always glad to be able to figure out what day of the week tomorrow is.  We memorize poetry; Bible verses; songs; hymns; creeds; lists of things they use (like days of the week, months of the year, books of the Bible).

Eventually, when my kids have a greater understanding, I will be adding in speeches; math tables; science facts, and history facts.  But there is too much to memorize and explore where we are now to worry about memorizing things they will have no understanding of for ten years.

 

Educationally, there is value in memorization.  The more data which can be retrieved by the brain, the more the brain is able to make connections between these owned pieces and the more ably people are able to think.  Those who practice the skill of memory are more able thinkers than those who must reference even frequently used data.

 

WHAT to memorize and how that material is presented to the child is the more relevant question.

[KSinNS]

I'm of the memorizing beautiful things camp. My kids have memorized lots of poetry, and it's done wonders for their public speaking, fluency, vocabulary, rhythm, and structure of language. It's been especially good for our son on the spectrum. They also memorize all their music for violin (suzuki books + fiddle songs). Overall, all this memory work has been amazingly valuable, because their memories are trained, so I can use memory to help compensate for their academic challenges.

[cintinative]

We are piecemail memorizers over here. We do the timeline (CC timeline song, but we're not in CC), skip counting songs, some grammar memory songs (like prepositions, linking verbs, etc.), and some history sentences (again CC). I find they are helpful "pegs" as someone else mentioned. They help my kids place things in a historical context, or they aid in the completion of their grammar and/or math.  We also memorize some poetry. I can't really verbalize why I think this is good but it's kind of a magical thing when you get that prose stuck in your head. It does the brain good somehow. Just like a really powerful song that sticks and changes you, so can a good poem.

[maize]

Memorization without context or understanding is not anything children will remember long term without keeping it up so I do think that's mostly useless. Practicing using your memory is sort of useful, but why memorize a list of dates or names that you won't have a chance to use for years? The time you might use trying to keep it up would be better spent.

 

Memorization with context, such as memorizing the times tables after learning what multiplication is and then continuing to use them in increasingly complex math problems is super useful.

 

Memorizing poetry or music or the like, to me, is a memory exercise that helps one learn to really appreciate the language, the art, the meaning and structure behind them. I think that's also useful, even if it fades from memory over time, the deeper experience of the art is there.

 

Knowing more context about the world in general and having those pegs of knowledge onto which to hang more knowledge is also really useful. But I don't think you can get them unless you understand what you know. I mean, if you just know the list of the kings of England, who cares if you learn about Oliver Cromwell if you don't know anything else about those kings. It's not going to mean anything more to you than learning about Genghis Khan. It will be all new information. I think public school educators tend to vastly underestimate the importance of that context. They say, you can just look it up! But that's not really true. To fluently read something about Cromwell for understanding and keep it in your head, you need to have something in your head to hang it on. What's England? What was the time period? What was the government? What is a revolution? What was the religion? And so forth. It's not memorization exactly, but it's having things in your memory that build a framework.

 

Side note... I think there is something innate in people, or maybe just in Americans?... that makes us recoil from children chanting random facts in unison. Or is that just me? Anyway, I think that's why some people find the CC memory work a little... off putting.

.

 

Actually, things memorized through chants and songs as children can stick with us for a very, very long time. I remember songs in Spanish I spent a couple of days learning and mostly didn't even understand at the time. Singing and chanting are incredibly powerful memory aids, and can make indelible impressions in young brains.

[Reefgazer]

It doesn't surprise me that a professional educator is disdainful and contemptuous of memorizing "mere facts"; that has been the case for a while (at least with the educators I interact with). The trend has been toward "higher order thinking skills" for a while now, and seemingly without the underlying foundation (or pegs). But I think classical education has withstood the test of time, and so I favor that method instead.

 

I happened to find myself in an interesting conversation the other day with a group of moms, none of whom I know very well. With the exception of myself, all are current or former professional educators. Somehow the discussion turned to homeschooling (two of us -- myself and one of the others -- are homeschoolers; the remaining three are not).

 

While not being downright disparaging of homeschooling in general, one mom took a jab at Classical Conversations, particularly its emphasis on memory work. She described a child she knew who "went around chanting 'E=MC²' and even had a little song about it." Then she commented something along the lines of, "Those of us with a background in education know that's exactly backwards -- anybody can teach little kids to memorize anything, but they don't have a clue what it means, so it's useless!"

 

I realize Classical Conversations is a hot-button issue in some circles, but I truly don't have a strong opinion one way or the other about it. I include that here only for context, as it's not really the issue. This mom and preschool director's comment flies in the face of what I have understood to be a core tenet of classical education: that memorization (especially in the grammar stage), even without full understanding, sets the child up for fleshing out that understanding in later stages. I believe SWB describes this as being like pegs on which the child can hang future knowledge.

 

These two opinions seems to be at polemic odds with one another. Not having a background in educational philosophy myself, I'm interested in hearing opinions on the subject. Is memorization in the early years, without full understanding of the information, an important foundation? Developmentally inappropriate? Neither/both? Why/why not?

 

What say the Hive? :D

[Xahm]

Memorization can be very valuable in many ways, but sometimes children and their parents, especially if they are somewhat prone to boasting anyway, can come across as a little ... overproud when reciting. For example, I think my kids are very bright, and they probably are, to be honest. My two year old could easily memorize the multiplication table if we prioritized it, but then I'd be strongly tempted to have her perform this (not that everyone would, but I would an I'm not unique in this). That would lead to some being unduly impressed and others being duly annoyed. Those teachers may have had experiences with parents sure that their child was a special kind of genius because they "knew physics" and so couldn't believe that the child could be struggling with basic addition, or whatever.

 

Again, not knocking memorization, but we are sticking to songs and poetry in English and target language for now.

(edited because child pressed keys while sitting on my lap) 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I do think it is rather pointless to memorize a bunch of stuff without having at least a little understanding of it. If anything it is easier to remember stuff if you know how it works.  For example, one could memorize the elements on the periodic table.  That doesn't give them any understanding of how to use the table and what the various labels mean.  If you refer to the table often while learning how to use it, you start to remember a lot of the elements and you remember where in general they are located on the table (which means something). 

 

That said, the skill of memorizing comes in handy when one goes to school.  There are times where you just have to knuckle down and memorize stuff for a test because you don't always have the benefit of getting to spend a lot of time using the material.  There are various techniques to memorizing information depending on the type of information.  I guess I consider that a study skill.  So I do have my kids practice that a bit. 

 

I sometimes did have my kids memorize poems.  I never had them memorize random lists of things.  I don't think making kids memorize stuff will damage them, but I do think it's mostly pointless.  Then again, I'm rather surprised that a group of teachers would be pooing on it.  The only memorizing I've ever had to do was in school.  Everything felt like a series of memorizing tasks.  I'd hold the information in my head long enough to be tested and then dump it for the next bit of random information.  Guess how much of that I remember now?  Not much.