Memorization

In third grade, we were taught the "times tables," which is to say we were to memorize it up to 12 X 12. This was, as far as I was concerned at the time, the end of multiplication. I managed to demonstrate to my teacher that I had it down, but I was never fully confident. The 7's, 8's, 9's, and 12's were never fully locked in, but I had developed systems for calculating the correct answers quickly enough that it fooled her. For instance, I knew that 9 X 9 = 81. If I was presented with, say, 9 X 6, I would quickly count backwards -- 72 (9 X 8), 63 (9 X 7), 54 (9 X 6) -- to find my answer. I developed this and other workarounds that I use to this day.

In other words, I never really memorized the whole thing, but rather just a few guideposts that I used to point me around the rest of that tedious terrain. When I got to sixth grade, my homeroom teacher sent me to a special math class. 

(This was in Columbia, SC, post-desegregation. At the time, I didn't know it, but these so-called "advanced" classes had been implemented throughout the city's public schools as a way keep white families from pulling their kids out in favor of private schools. Although, I did notice, as kids do, that we were all white which definitely made me wonder if skin color had something to do with intelligence . . . But I digress.) 

On the first day, the teacher of this special class pulled me aside and asked, "8 X 7?" This wasn't one I'd memorized, but it was simple to count back from the solution to 8 X 8 (64), which I had memorized, to the solution to 8 X 7. I was able to convincingly bark out, "56!" She then told me, "I guess you know your times tables. If a child knows 8 X 7, they know the whole thing."

This is the first time I've ever confessed to anyone that I've never memorized the times tables, yet I still managed, despite this obvious hole in my education, to win acceptable math grades right through my sophomore year in college where my brain was finally broken by discrete mathematics because, frankly, there were just too many damn algorithms to memorize.

Psychologist Ellen Langer writes that "memorizing is a strategy for taking in material that has no personal meaning." That certainly was true for me. 

It was not until long after I'd "memorized" the times tables that I began to grasp what they actually meant, let alone what I might want to use them for in the course of my day-to-day life. It wasn't until I realized that multiplication and division were essential to understanding the statistics on the backs of baseball cards -- personally meaningful material -- that I finally comprehended what it was all about.

Today, in those rare occasions when a calculator isn't available, I get by on my curious system of calculation rather than memorized facts. In reflecting on Langer's assertion, I can see that the non-memorizing strategy I'd developed was, in a way, personally meaningful even if the times tables were not: I wanted my teachers to give me good grades so I figured out how to give them what they wanted, which was correct answers, barked out. Multiplication had very little to do with it.

In modern life, large-scale memorization, unless you're in a profession like stage acting, isn't a necessary skill, even as it continues to be a school skill. That hasn't always been the case. Famously, in Ancient Greece most average citizens could recite the entirety of Homer -- Iliad and Odyssey. These important mythologies and stories only existed as an oral tradition, surviving by being passed along from person to person, from generation to generation. As verse, they were in a format designed for memorization, and while individuals likely took liberties with their own retellings, being able to do so centered each individual in society -- in other words, it was deeply and personally meaningful. 

Most of what happened in the Western world's earliest schools was likewise memorization. To be a scholar was to be a vessel for the accumulated knowledge of humanity. 

It was the phonetic alphabet, then the printing press, that eventually put the nail in the coffin of memorization as a day-to-day necessity. Suddenly, what was once the exclusive purview of memorization, became externalized. The phonetic alphabet was a major technological breakthrough, allowing a single person to store knowledge, personally meaningful or not, on behalf of the rest of us. The printing press made this technology widely available.

The same is happening today with computers that can perform mathematics on our behalf at breathtaking speeds without the need for anyone to memorize times tables or algorithms. Computers have also taken the printing press a step farther in that we today carry, in our pockets, the accumulated knowledge of humanity in the form of smartphones with internet access.

We've no doubt lost a great deal as the need for memorization has declined, just as no less a figure than Socrates predicted. We know about his worry that the widespread use of the phonetic alphabet would make us, as individuals, less knowledgable and less mentally capable because his student, Plato, wrote his words down. I wonder, if we had never invented a phonetic alphabet, would we each, today, be able to recite Socrates' Apology? Homer? Shakespeare? Darwin? Einstein?

It's a moot point, of course, because we're not going back.

While from a historical perspective, Langer's assertion doesn't hold water -- memorization was a key building block of civilization -- but in today's world, a world in which we have developed technologies to free our cognitive energy for other things, her point is well-taken. To the degree that schools continue to push memorization is the degree to which the material is not personally meaningful to students. 

There are no doubt times when memorization in the name of education is useful. I'm sure we can all think of examples and there are many math educators who are firm in their conviction that memorizing times tables remains essential. But the importance of memorization as an educational tool continues to decline, even as we inevitably will lose a great deal in the process. What we gain through our technologies, however, is an expansion of our brains, making computers, as we did books, into extensions of our minds, both individually and collectively. No wonder so many of us feel slightly panicked when we've left our phones at home: it's as if we've left part of our minds behind.

As a play-based preschool educator, forced memorization isn't in my tool belt. Our approach is to support children as they pursue personally meaningful knowledge and skills. But it's fascinating how often these young children, who are not literate, who do not use generally use computers, will find joy in memorizing those things that are personally meaningful. A three-year-old friend of mine once memorized the Periodic Table of Elements, including atomic numbers. I've known many young children who know all the words to all the songs in the animated movie Frozen. In fact, every child memorizes mountains of personally meaningful material during their early years. We see in them this human capacity to memorize, undiminished by technologies, but the common thread is that the material must be personally meaningful, which usually means self-selected. 

It saddens me that so many of these new humans find themselves subjected in their schools to rote memorization of letters and numbers and phonetics and colors and days of the week, material forced upon them by adults. Material that most of them would easily memorize, if allowed, through their own curiosity, when the time is ripe. This reliance on the outdated method of forced memorization teaches children that learning is hard, that they aren't particularly good at it, and that the goal is not knowledge, but rather pleasing their teachers.

******

 

"This inspiring book is essential reading for every family choosing a preschool, every teacher working with young children, and every citizen who wonders how we can raise children who will make the world a better place." ~Dr. Laura Markham, author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

If you liked reading this post, you might also enjoy one of my books. To find out more, Click here!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!