Sixty years ago, students memorized what they studied. It was a key faculty of the mind to be exercised. They memorized the multiplication tables, poems and mathematical theorems. They committed lists to memory for Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
Memorization enabled students to grow to adulthood with information permanently planted in their brains. It was important to memorize to learn the rhythm and music of language.
As a child, I would be required to learn a poem for homework. Even today the weak-strong rhythm is part of everything I speak and write.
But then there were fool educators in the United States who decided that memorization was a lower level of learning and had to be removed. It may be a lower level if promoted by itself but in conjunction with other thinking skills it is a key area to be developed.
My mother used to say that as a 14 year old, she had to learn all the capes and bays around Australia. Perhaps that was going too far but it certainly developed the skills of memorization. We are told to "use it or lose it". That applies to the mental development that goes with memorization.
Today in Papua New Guinea, the skills of memorization are long dead, except the skills of singing. Students no longer go home to learn lists of information. There is no point in asking students to write lists from memory in exam. Most could not do it.
So memorization has been replaced by the cruel and useless task of answering objective questions. Students have become intellectually lazy. They know nothing. They tick and flick responses that are already on paper. How do students study for an objective test exam?
We read in the media of the study into mathematics and science teaching in the world. The USA comes 28th at last count. Singapore and South Korea come first. A large part of this is that their students have to work hard to memorize mathematical and scientific processes.
PNG probably comes near last narrowly beating Outer Bessarabia and Easter Island.
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