Myth: We should never memorize things

Myth

Do not memorize! Reason it out!

Fact

Opponents of schooling claim that school makes you memorize things, while reasoning is superior. As a result, some proponents of high intelligence falsely suggest we should never use memorization. This fallacy comes from failing to see the full spectrum of knowledge applicability from dry useless facts to highly abstract reasoning rules. Understanding, thinking, problem solving, creativity, etc. are all based on knowledge. The rule should rather be: Knowledge selection is critical for success in learning. The correct and non-pejorative definition of the word "memorize" is: "to commit knowledge to memory". Along this definition, you can say: Do memorize! Just make a smart selection of things to learn. See: Smart and dumb learning for a discussion and examples. A simple test for good learning (incl. memorization) is the pleasure of learning

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