What's 12 x 11? Um, Let Me Google That

What's 12 x 11? Um, Let Me Google That

 

Contrary to today's educational theories, memorization is critical in the classroom and life.

 

By David G. Bonagura Jr.

I'm a bad teacher. Or so I would be labeled by today's leading education professionals. My crime? Not my classroom performance and not my students' test scores. The problem is that I require students to memorize.

My students learn proper grammar by drilling. They memorize vocabulary by writing given words and their definitions multiple times for homework, and then sitting the following day for an oral quiz. They memorize famous quotations by reciting them at the start of class each day.

For centuries, these pedagogical techniques were the hallmark of primary and secondary education. But once John Dewey's educational theories were adopted in public schools beginning in the 1940s, they fell out of vogue, ridiculed and rejected by education professionals across the country as detrimental to learning. In schools of education such techniques are derisively labeled "drill and kill" and "chalk and talk." Instead, these experts preach "child-centered" learning activities that make the teacher the "facilitator" in education, which is understood as a natural process of self-discovery.

This educational philosophy has driven every national educational initiative of the last several decades: New Math, Whole Language, Outcome-based Education and now the Common Core Standards that are being rolled out across the country.

All of the previous initiatives have at least three things in common. First, they didn't work. The U.S. still lags behind the world in education, even though each program, in its day, was touted as the means to bring our children to the top. Second, they all espoused the same child-centered educational philosophy, which has coincided with American students' mediocre performance in the classroom. Third, they rejected memorization out of hand.

Of course, all good teachers want their students to acquire not just basic knowledge, but a deeper, conceptual understanding that is manifested through critical thinking and analysis—skills that educational fads and initiatives rightly extol. But such thinking is impossible without first acquiring rock-solid knowledge of the foundational elements upon which the pyramid of cognition rests.

Memorization is the most effective means to build that foundation. Yet drilling multiplication tables, learning to spell, and reciting formulas and rules are almost nowhere to be found in today's classrooms, tarred as antithetical to true learning and even harmful for students.

My classroom experience proves otherwise. Once students have memorized a given set of vocabulary and grammar rules, they are able to apply their knowledge to more difficult concepts and activities. Having the fundamentals at the ready gives them both skill and confidence, two attributes that make learning effective and enjoyable. If they skipped the memory work on the grounds that the information can easily be found online, they would drown in a sea of URLs as they struggled to find the basic information necessary to answer the deeper questions.

Memorization doesn't need to be as odious as schools of education make it sound. In fact, memorization exercises in the classroom can be made exciting with a little ingenuity and humor on the part of the teacher. Elementary school students, whose minds are particularly fit for memorizing, but not yet ready for critical thinking, especially excel in these activities.

Even so, students are not likely to love doing homework or studying for tests. It's a safe bet they also don't like eating vegetables or going to bed early. But these are all necessary habits for good health.

In our technologically sophisticated culture, some people have concluded that memorization is no longer necessary since all the information we need is available at the push of a button or tap of a screen. But I shudder at what might have happened to the Apollo 13 flight crew if its NASA team had to spend precious minutes looking up multiplication tables, or what will happen if our government's national-security advisers needed to consult Wikipedia to shape their foreign policy decisions. If teachers compel their students to memorize basic facts about math, science, grammar, literature and history, then these students will be far more adept at responding to challenges when they become leaders.

Before we implement the same faulty educational philosophy disguised in the new dressings of the Common Core, memorization deserves to be reinstated to its foundational role in learning. Only then will American students have a core of knowledge that they can think critically about.

Mr. Bonagura is a teacher and writer in New York.