Memorizing Is Learning
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder defends memorization as a legitimate form of learning, pushing back against the idea that it's mere 'rote' repetition without value.
Key Takeaways
- Memorization builds the foundation - Committing facts to memory enables higher-order thinking about those facts
- It's not the only kind of learning - Memorization works alongside analysis, application, and synthesis, not in opposition to them
- Don't dismiss what works - Decades of anti-memorization rhetoric have left students without the factual knowledge they need
Transcript
Memorization is learning.
Have we forgotten that memorization is a type of learning?
A lot of the comments on my previous video about repeated reading expressed some concern that students were just memorizing the words and not really learning them.
And those are the same thing.
Memorizing a passage that you hear you are not able to read is something different like if you remember in Laura Ingalls Wilder's books before she was able to read she was able to memorize something that she had read to her and she was trying to convince her family that she could read and obviously that's not the same thing but when it comes to new vocabulary memorizing a sight word is learning it right especially if you have a more sophisticated word you know more advanced word not like a decodable primary word you know learning that word by sight by memory like is learning it and i don't know how to put it any other way but like where did we get this idea in education that memorization is not learning now it's not the type of learning that you need to do for all material some things need to be experienced in a different way maybe there's a there's a skill there's an application like memorizing the answer to a math problem is not the same as being able to solve the math problem yourself like so i get that there are different things going on here But memorizing is a type of learning.
It is not an invalid procedure.
It doesn't discount what has happened to say that, oh, they just memorized it.
Yes, memorizing is learning.
Let me know what you're seeing about this.
Are you seeing confusion about this issue?