Wednesday, October 2, 2013

MEMORIZATION IS GOOD

Memorization is good Today's "innovative" educational theorists either condemn memorization outright, or they condescend to discount it as "mere memorization," devaluing it thereby. How vain! Memorization has ancient roots. There is nothing "mere" about it. From memorizing speech patterns, the alphabet, numbers, names of persons, places, and things, to memorizing one's own name, address and telephone number, memory is both primal and manifest in mankind! African griots memorized the entire history of a people, being in training from their youth for this honor, which enabled them to recount for days. Others have memorized the Quran, like Suleiman Diallo of America and England, whose memory won him freedom from slavery and renown. Egyptian priests-scribes spent 40 years, at a minimum, in intense memorization of mathematics, hieroglyphics, astronomy, history, science, religion, from their youth. Today's condemnation is just another of harmful concoctions that we blithely, and absentmindedly, consume to our hurt, harm, hilarity. People without memory are the lost, known as amnesiacs. Yet, these corrupt educational theorists have confounded the pedagogy with their harebrained, "innovative" products, like memorization is bad! We're lost! Is it any wonder that little kids can recite rap lyrics from memory, but not the multiplication table? We'd better wake up before memory is gone and there will E none of us! Memorization is good! Use it!