Is memorizing facts useless?

On the first day of class Dr. Duncan asked us to write down what we remembered about social studies during school? Pretty easy question, right? Sadly all I could remember was the name of a couple of my teachers and how bad I hated reading the long, boring chapters in my textbook and answering questions afterwards. I can’t recall any social studies projects I completed or any fun field trips. The reason I can’t recall anything exciting from social studies is because we never did anything exciting in social studies. My teachers would say, “Read chapter 9. Copy the definitions in the chapter, answer the questions at the end and we will have a test on this information on Friday.” I was taught that memorizing equals learning. I am living proof this is wrong. Ask me today any key facts about the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, or any other major events in history and see how much I can recall (hardly anything). Well I memorized these facts in school so shouldn’t I know them? Hence, memorizing doesn’t equal learning. So the questions is, is memorizing facts useless?

According to the article, “Learning by heart is pointless for Google generation” the author writes, “But for today’s youngsters, tedious rote learning is pointless because such basic facts are only a mouse click away…” Also in the article Tapscott suggest that memorizing facts and figures is a waste of time. When I first thought about this question, is memorizing facts useless, my first response was yes. But after reflecting on this article I do not think that totally dismissing memorization is a good idea. First, anyone can post anything on the internet. Does that make it true? Of course not. So although there is lots of valuable information on the web, there is also a lot of erroneous information as well. Second, memorizing facts helps us recall information very quickly. For example, when I was studying for the GRE I memorized a lot of prefixes and suffixes to help me with analogies. This proved to be a big help when I was trying to figure out a word’s meaning that I did not know. I could use the prefixes and suffixes as clues. Don’t get me wrong, memorizing facts is not always a good idea but there is a place for it.

I am the product of the memorizing generation. If you could not memorize while I was in school you would not do well. In school I was not taught phonics, I was taught to memorize sight words. Hence, this is why I’m still a horrible speller today. Also, I had to memorize my times tables. I would take tests and have to answer 20 multiplication problems in less than 5 minutes. If you could not do this you would have to keep practicing until you could. This is where I agree with Ofsted when he reported that key facts is not good enough to enable students to form overviews and demonstrate strong conceptual understanding.

Just like everything else in life memorizing has its place, just in moderation. Learning sight words is great. Students do not need to sound out every single word they read. But students need to learn phonics as well so when they come across a word they do not know they can sound it out. Memorizing my multiplication tables has been of great benefit to me. But it is important to understand the meaning behind multiplication (that it is simply repeated addition) before memorizing these facts. In all subjects, especially social studies, it is very important for students to learn about history and to understand the world and why things are the way they are. This cannot be accomplished by simply memorizing basic facts. This goes back to the saying if you don’t know history you are likely to repeat it. So to answer the question, is memorizing facts useless, my answer is NO. I do agree with Wardrop’s article that we need to teach children to think creatively so they can learn to interpret and apply their knowledge but I do not believe memorizing facts is totally useless when done the proper way—in moderation.