Memorization (and Procrastination?)

My Lit teacher strongly believes that route memorization has a place in education, and has outright told us so. "If I go to the doctor, I want him to have these diseases memorized or my body parts memorized," she's said, or at least I've paraphrased. My Lit teacher always seems to say things that ruffle my feathers, regardless of my agreement because her tone of voice tends to imply an absolute correctness of opinion, as if the idea were such a possibility!

So I attend her class, and memorize my vocabulary and Greek mythology and poetry terms, because I am a good little AP student working towards my goal of... well, something.

Most of my AP classes, I know, will not give me any credit once I am at college. You don't need calculus or economics or European history to become a music teacher. I mean, sure, they are applicable (well, maybe economics is a stretch as far as applicability goes) in some form or another, but I can certainly get by without them.

I suppose, when I was young, my goal was to take as many AP classes as possible, because I knew that was what smart kids did. Later on, it must have been something about appealing to colleges. My junior year, when I signed up for my senior AP schedule of hell, it was all about college credit.

So I talked myself into these classes, and now find myself awash in memorized facts and information that's usefulness is debatable. It all goes away eventually.

My basic memory of US history (my first ever AP class) is the differences between the AoC and the Constitution, what events lead to the Revolution, the time frame surrounding the Civil War and bits and pieces of the war, WWI through WWII, and Reagan. I suppose that's more than the average person certainly knows, but I know there are 44 presidents, so somewhere along the line, I've most definitely missed something.

AP Euro is even foggier, as it was my first experience with history outside of the US (skipping a grade and moving around made this a possibility) and I detested my teacher something fierce (I suppose you need one mortal enemy in the form of a teacher per year, otherwise there's nothing you can fairly complain about). I do remember a French Revolution, and a couple world wars, and some stuff about religion... Oh, and there was definitely quite a bit going on with Prussia, Russia, and Austria (who had known there was such a country named Prussia before this?), but I have no idea what.

Lit seems to be my favorite class to pick on this year, and let me tell you, I can remember nada that I have memorized (and memorized have I ever...).

Which begs the question, if only months after memorizing something for a class, you have forgotten it all, do you really want your doctor to simply be a memorizer?

The classes I have retained the most from have been the classes where I have grown to understand something, rather than having had shoved it in my brain.

Mathematics without memorized formulas (formulas are fine though) is beautiful in how it describes the world. I melted into English last year, as my teacher taught us how to argue like the best of politicians. Biology was fun and zany when my understanding came from experiments and practice, rather than memorization of organelles. Music is my heart and soul in its lack of route memorization.

My point here is simple: the memorization needs to stop. We are taking away the beauty, wonder, and excitement from the world by presenting the world as a list and telling kids "get this down by tomorrow."

(Alright, and personally, I would love a lighter load on the homework right now. AP classes=my insanity. But, you know, the kids!)

~Jess the Nerdfighting BandGeek
PS: Some of this thinking on learning has been caused by a mass binge on Vi Hart, Kahn Academy, Vlogbrothers, XKCD, and the wikipedia-ing that they have brought. If you have the time, I suggest a massive, nerdy binge.

PPS: Yes, I was procrastinating on my English as I wrote this. We've been in "poetry boot camp for the past two weeks, which has equated to two hours of homework a night, and I just can't do it anymore. Which is of course, how this weekend it got procrastinated until the night (technically now morning) before it was due.

PPPS: YAY FOR CAFFEINE! WHEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!