[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.”

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.