The ongoing debate on whether memorization is a good learning strategy misses one crucial point: everybody’s learning style is different. I can’t memorize worth a damn. It takes me years to remember my own address and phone number. I need to understand how things work in order to process them. Other people, however, are brilliant at memorizing and find it very useful. For some, memorization is an effective tool that unlocks their creativity.
This is why I always give my students two options when we study grammar. If they find it easier, they can memorize all of the cases where the subjunctive (to give one example) is used. If, however, they are like me and are incapable of retaining a list of rules in their heads, I explain to them the basic principles that govern the use of the subjunctive and they never have to remember a single rule. There is usually an equal number of people who choose each method.
The temptation to look for a single teaching method that will work for every student and transform the education system is huge. But we have got to realize that we are wasting our time looking for a single solution or a single recipe. The complexity of teaching is due precisely to the uniqueness of individual learning strategies and individual teaching methods. The only recipe here is to let each student and each teacher explore what will work for them.
Teaching is like love. There is no algorithm governing it.
Clarissa's Blog 
I love this post, Clarissa. I’m one of those people who can’t memorize worth a damn unless I have a rule to memorize by. If I have the rules, I can reel off all sorts of lists. No one learning style indeed.
p.s. Thank you for continuing to write. I’m out here thinking about you and reading and appreciating you very much. 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you, dear E.
LikeLike
I agree. I had one very well intentioned teacher tell the class not to highlight while studying at home because she felt that highlighting would keep us from reading the textbook the way it was meant to be read. The problem for me was that I often have a hard time concentrating on the textbook when I’m just trying to read it. Highlighting can make a huge difference and often causes me to see words I would miss otherwise, and I don’t think it interferes with how I see the text. I think I tried her advice for one chapter and then ignored it after that.
LikeLike
I can’t work without highlighting either.
LikeLike
“Work is love made visible.” My mentor had this on a scrap of paper, pinned to her door, during all the years that we worked together (possibly she still does). This makes me think of that.
LikeLike
I’m not sure that we can teach memorization. You can suggest it, but teaching it? Really?
LikeLike
As usual I dislike ‘one size fits all’ approaches in anything.
I still think one of the two or three luckiest things that ever happened to me (along with never having to serve in the military) was just barely escaping the whole language approach to English spelling. I had teachers who used a phonics-based approach.
Had I been expected to learn through some sort of ‘look say’ or ‘sight word’ approach I’m sure I would have been diagnosed as haivng all kinds of learning disorders as it’s as far away from any way that I can learn anything as I can imagine.
I’m just not visually oriented enough (the phonics approach allowed me to subordinate the visual aspect of reading to muscle memory and sound both of which are easier for me to deal with).
I’m sure that there were kids in the same classrooms who would have done better with an arbitrary ‘memorize this’ approach but I’m glad it worked out for me, at least.
I always try to present the same information in various ways appealing to different learning strategies and world views. I often fail (and students tend to hear things like: “This approach works for me, it might not work for you, you have to experiment and find a way that works for you on your own” as “Do it this way, or else!” But I do keep trying.
I remember an experimental class I did which the students really liked and found valuable but also found very frustrating because it called for skills that aren’t really encouraged in Central-Eastern Europe.
Me: Well, you have to make some imaginitive leaps and use your creativity.
Student: We aren’t taught creativity.
Me: (thinking) Where do I even begin to address that?
LikeLike
I just started to teach maths and this is exactly the problem I am having. How do I teach maths to kids that want to use the “memorize” approach? These kids have no problem blindly applying the rules they have learned, but they are totally unable to solve even simple text exercises, because it is impossible to solve them without some form of understanding of what the rules mean. I am trying hard to make them understand, but probably some of these kids just do all other subjects with the memorize approach, and so they are very scared to start using a different approach. I am not sure what to do with them…
LikeLike
I know people who memorize certain general situations in which you might use a specific technique. In a proofs class, my professor made a list of general techniques and a list of situations in which one is generally used over the other. Then there was something to memorize, but we still had to understand the given definitions, rules, and properties in order to actually solve the problem.
LikeLike
This ought to be self-evident. It is deeply annoying that administrators want to try to force everyone into the same mold. There is a move in elementary mathematics courses to try to “enforce standards” by giving common final exams to all sections of a course. Sometimes this extends to common midterm tests. This inevitably makes instructors water down their instruction and teach to the test, depriving their students of the opportunity for creativity in problem-solving.
LikeLike
I’m doing all I can to avoid precisely this kind of policy at my own department. I want to make my own syllabi and my own tests that are geared specifically to each group. I want to experiment and have the freedom to change the structure of these elementary courses as I see fit. But the push to make everything exactly the same is very strong. People say it hurts the students to have different sections of the same course taught in different ways. Of course, I disagree.
LikeLike
“People say it hurts the students to have different sections of the same course taught in different ways. Of course, I disagree.”
And, of course, you are right and “people” are wrong. I fight the same fight.
LikeLike
I can’t memorize worth a damn either. I have nothing but awe for people who can recite long snatches of poetry from memory.
(My dad had to memorize the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales for school, oh, 45 to 50 years ago. He can still recite the first few lines of it.)
LikeLike
“(My dad had to memorize the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales for school, oh, 45 to 50 years ago. He can still recite the first few lines of it.)”
So can I. I have no trouble memorizing poetry. I don’t compose poetry much anymore, but in bygone years I have composed a complete sonnet mentally before writing it down on paper.
LikeLike
late to the party, but: http://goodenoughprofessor.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-teach-your-students-not-to-kill.html
LikeLike