Things That Used to Be (#1): Memorizing Knowledge

Self | 02-18-21 | CharlesOconnell

[CharlesOConnell]

Things in our lives that are very remote from common experience of all prior ages...

Today, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will support the movement to declare that "the expectation of correct answers to math problems, is racist". This is really insulting African-American people with the implication that they're too stupid to do math.

Katherine Johnson, African American, performed mathematical computations that other people couldn't, to support the American space race.

This fits in with a movement begun the elite industrialists, the Titans of Industry (actually, Titans of Wall St.), the JP Morgans, Andrew Carnegies, and virtually all other top elites, to crush the imagination of the children of common people, to enslave them into being dependent thralls incapable of knowing what to do without instruction from superiors, using compulsory universal education on the Prussian model. Corroboration of the information in today's topic comes from Improve Education #45, The Crusade Against Knowledge and Memory http://www.improve-education.org/id70.html.

Mr. Gatto revealed that there is in fact memorization of irrelevant and discontinuous, arbitrary fact in the Regime, but it was calculated to be destructive of the type of good memorization of relevant, continuous, purposeful facts that homeschool and 1-room students used to get, in much shorter time, only several months of intensive schooling to attain minimal functional literacy and numeracy, until as 13 year olds they would be treated like little adults and be expected to become self-employed.

(My own father, who got to attend a little college prep late in the 1910s, the Ignatius Academy of Chicago, used the phrase in Latin "Repetitio est mater studiorum", "Memorization is the Mother of Students".)

You should investigate this topic. Here's one factoid from a good source, the 1960s Understanding Media of the Canadian university professor Marshall McLuhan: Complete memorization of texts was considered standard in a number of high civilizations. In the Indian civilization, exams consisted in substantial measure in oral demonstration of understanding of subjects supported by recitation of complete texts. "If every copy of the Bhagavad Gita were somehow to be lost, it could be instantly recreated from memory."

[Daffynition]

[FreedomPoster]

Ping

[hanamizu]

“Memorization is the Mother of Students”.

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I had an English professor who required us to recite a fairly long bit of a Shakespeare play. As he did so he said that he had professors who could recite whole books from memory. Of course we thought this absurd and impossible, but with perseverance we did our recitations.

I took that idea and imposed it on my junior high history students requiring them to memorize and recite the preamble to the Declaration of Independence starting at the beginning and ending with “...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Their reaction first was like mine; such a thing is impossible. But nearly all of them succeeded. Best part was that some kids who didn’t usually do well, ended up getting a rare (for them) A for the achievement. Never had a parent complaint about the assignment.

[N. Theknow]

My mother the English teacher always said, “Do not memorize, learn.”

“When you memorize something you quickly forget it.
When you learn something you never forget it.”

[goodnesswins]

I made my grandkids write out the Declaration of Independence about 22 years ago. Not sure it helped...ones a flaming liberal to this day...at age 32 now..the others are similarly brainwashed

[hanamizu]

“When you memorize something you quickly forget it.
When you learn something you never forget it.”

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Don’t want to argue with your mom, but I can still recite the 23rd Psalm (Oops I mean, of course, the 23rd Palm) that I had to memorize in church more than a half century ago.

I was also forced to memorize the times tables (remember those?) and they’re still rattling around in my head. I know from first-hand experience that kids today aren’t required to memorize/learn them and have to resort to fingers or a calculator to solve problems like 8 x 4—these are jr. high kids.

[frogjerk]

I have never forgotten that 6x8=48 thru memorization or any of the times tables for that matter. Some things need to be memorized to be available at an instant. It will save you tons of money and may even save your life one day.

[reed13k]

I have a fair amount of memorized stuff from my early youth still rattling around.

My short term memory - trying to cram it in and recall it quickly started trailing off in my mid-teens - caused me no end of grief as a Plebe at USNA.

Longer term memory I have fairly decent recall, but it takes me going over things multiple times over a longer period of time refreshing it repeatedly before it “sticks”.

Then there are the odds and ends bits that for some reason just stick. Odd statistics or facts that I never made any effort to remember but for some reason are “just there” all the time ready for recall.

[odawg]

“My mother the English teacher always said, “Do not memorize, learn.””

But, sometimes, you first have to memorize it. I have talked to doctors, Air Force pilots, they told me they spent a lot of time memorizing crucial data.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

My father (born in 1924) had a remarkable memory, even by the standards of bygone days. He would memorize poetry as a break from his medical studies, and could recite Tennyson or Longfellow by the hour (which his children found boring to the point of coma). Once, while we were driving to a rodeo on July 4th, he recited the entire Declaration of Independence, and I suspect he could have recited the entire Constitution as well.

I also believe that he never forgot the name or face of anyone he had ever met.

[HIDEK6]

"Repetitio est mater studiorum", "Memorization is the Mother of Students"

The correct translation in "Memorization is the Mother of Studies."

[BfloGuy]

My mother the English teacher always said, “Do not memorize, learn.”

Memorizing answers the night before a test, say, will result in that.

But systematic memorization [the alphabet, the times tables, and the state capitals, for examples] followed up by frequent testing is a very powerful learning tool.

The memorized facts soon become automatized and remain with you forever.

Memorization has gotten a bad reputation as being drudge work; but that's from the point of view of adult teachers. Young children not only memorize facts easily, they often find it fun.

[EQAndyBuzz]

I remember hearing once “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

[bgill]

Don't know about math being racist but cursive is.

[Sans-Culotte]

I had an English professor who required us to recite a fairly long bit of a Shakespeare play.

I always had an easy time memorizing Shakespeare if it was one of the verse sections. Some theorize that iambic pentameter was popular among the Elizabethan playwrights because it was easy for the actors to memorize. It makes a pattern in which every line (more or less) reads like da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da. I once acted in a Shakespeare play in which my part was written partly in verse, partly in prose. I quickly memorized the verse portions, but the prose sections were much tougher.

[Boogieman]

“I was also forced to memorize the times tables”

They tried to make me memorize the table, but instead I just figured out the patterns in the numbers so I could recreate any part of the table I needed.

[hanamizu]

They tried to make me memorize the table, but instead I just figured out the patterns in the numbers so I could recreate any part of the table I needed.

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You have a gift for math. Likely enjoy math. Most, however, don’t. Problem is that math teachers tend to share your gift, so they think the best way to master things like the times table is how you and they did—discovery of patterns. But most of us don’t have that gift. Memorization, which was a frustrating waste of time for you, actually got the needed information into my non-math-gifted mind.

[Myrddin]

The Druids committed everything to memory. There was a rudimentary form of "written books" in the form of twisted leaves. The only downside of not writing things down is the loss of everything when an extermination event occurs. The Romans exterminated the Druids and their knowledge died with them.

[Myrddin]

I use Duolingo daily to learn Welsh, German, Gaelic, Irish, Spanish, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. In recent days, I've made good progress in mastering hiragana and some Katakana. Those are just symbols for sounds that can be cobbled into pronounceable words. I'm at a similar point with Mandarin Chinese in capturing the pictogram to sound mapping. Both Japanese and Chinese have the Kanji pictograms that convey and idea or concept, but do not directly map to a spoken sound. It is wrote memory to learn the symbol and its meaning AND map it to the spoken language. I'm finding that to be challenging. I fall back to Scots Gaelic for more "fun" learning. The Mandarin Chinese throws another level of challenge with the tonal nature of the language. In Duolingo, you must recognize the written and spoken content AND speak correctly enough for the voice recognition to detect that you mastered speaking. Fairly easy in German, Spanish and Japanese. Not so easy in Mandarin.