I know many bloggers do not want to repeat themselves. But I was explicitly taught to memorize, beginning with my old school teacher parents making me recite my times tables (because I was not learning them in “the new math”), followed by working with the Navigators when I was an undergraduate.
I believe repeating to the point of memorization is good. And it appears the postmodern experiment in ‘discovery learning’ has failed.
Many in Australian education believe children are only really learning when they are active. As a result, teachers are told it is wrong to sit children at their desks and ask them to listen to what is being taught.
Again, the evidence proves otherwise. The UK report suggests that even when sitting and listening children are internalising what is being taught. Learning can occur whether they are “active” or “passive”.
Often derided as “drill and kill” or making children “parrot” what is being taught, the UK report and other research suggests that memorisation and rote learning are important classroom strategies, which all teachers should be familiar with.
The UK report states that teachers need to “encourage re-reading and highlighting to memorise key ideas”, while research in how children best learn concludes that some things, such as times tables and reciting rhymes, ballads and poems, must be memorised until they can be recalled automatically.
Read the article: then, parents, ask your teachers why they are not evidence based.
The “ancients”, as in the education system during the 19th century for the middle & upper classes, understood it all pretty well: you have to memorize & trust the axioms (or the fundamentals), and learn to understand the advanced topics with building blocks you gained from the early memorization efforts.
Somehow this system worked for, oh, around 2000 years from when it was developed during Ancient Greece, or even earlier. But, no, we needed mass indoctrination systems (based off the Prussian Military School system) to take over. Because it’s first purpose was to remove God from our lives. It’s been wildly effective at that.
Ah, yes: I was one of the last who had to learn Latin declensions and read their Caesar in the original.
This bunch have climbed up the ivory tower, smashed the stairs behind them, and not even left a rope.
I made some attempts to find that type of teaching when I was young, but it simply wasn’t available. Amazingly, it’s now easier to do classic training because of the Internet. Funny that.
The academy have forgotten that they do not control the libraries — not in the public system, nor the internet, nor what is in the stacks.
Truth will out. Eventually.