These are really compelling points. I will confess as a current college student, that I have very much undervalued memorization (as have the academic institutions more broadly, frankly) for that of critical thought. In fact, there are many tests that I will not study for, simply because I realize that I can quickly piece together the answer based on context clues in the question. However, it has lead to me getting towards the end of my degree and feeling that I frankly do not know much more than when I started. This is however, further complicated by the fact that fields like my degree, which are social sciences, have so much information constantly in flux, that it seems very difficult to "know" anything. It is generally more impressive to be a fast scourer of scientific journals than it is of knowing information on hand. Memory is certainly a dying virtue in the digitized academic sphere.
Thanks for your comment Ian. I had a similar experience coming out of university. I feel that I received a re-education once I started teaching my kids, as I was learning alongside them (even got to finally memorize the periodic table). I agree that committing information from the social sciences to memory is likely a challenging task given its flux. Yet there are passages that bear on the social sciences (like the Socrates quote at the beginning of the article) that seem worthwhile remembering. Training the mind to remember deeply, whatever the topic or form may be, will in time bear fruit in all academic endeavours.
This is a bitter pill to swallow. I've celebrated the fact that I've been able to allow my memory to rest because of the internet for years now. Even as a prescriber of medication, I find that while I have some things memorized, many I just look up on the spot with the patient in front of me. On one hand this is wonderful, but I hadn't considered the other side. I don't disagree with anything you said. I'll be thinking on this.
Thanks for your comment Paul. I think the part I would focus on is decreasing continuous digital distraction, giving our mind time to actually process and consolidate memories. I do not think it means that we have to commit everything to memory, but rather nurture and develop our ability to memorize, sometimes choosing the more challenging option rather than 'easy knowledge', and teaching our kids to hone their attention and focus so that they will be able to actually use their memory.
Memorizing a piece of music or the lyrics to a song is also a fantastic way to practice your memory skills! I still remember the piece I played my my piano exam over 30 years ago!
Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023Liked by Ruth Gaskovski
A very interesting analysis. I loved memorizing poems as a child, which I did purely of my own initiative. I have always felt memorization was unfairly judged by supposed elites, but couldn’t always articulate just how or why.
Another way memorization is helpful is in conversation. If you can actually remember facts and stories you can have much more interesting conversations. I struggle with this: I am always forgetting details of what I read and so when I try to describe it I come up blank a lot. If I write about what I read it does help. I’m also trying some visual journaling lately.
That's a really good point Síochána. A richer foundation of knowledge and vocabulary gained through memorization would also fertilize conversation. I keep a little book where I copy interesting. funny, or particularly deep quotes (many of them by Dickens). In his 1512 textbook 'De Copia' Erasmus encouraged readers to keep a 'commonplace' book to note down, "occurrences of striking words, archaic or novel diction, brilliant flashes of style, adages, examples, and pithy remarks worth memorizing." These commonplace books were all the rage back then and were even regarded as necessary tools for 'the cultivation of an educated mind.'
Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023Liked by Ruth Gaskovski
I've been thinking about writing an article on a very similar topic to this for months now, but just haven't been able to compress my ideas on it into linear thoughts.
I write a music-focused substack, so it's addressing this idea from the perspective of a lyric...
"Like those Indians, lost in the rain forest, forced to drag burning wood wherever they went. They had all forgotten how to start a fire"
This image always jumped out at me as being so... heavy, anxiety-inducing even. Now I can't stop thinking of smart phones as burning logs.
I would love to read your perspective from a music-angle on this topic. The dissolution of memory affects all areas of our lives, but I feel hopeful when I see how readily children engage in applying their minds to memorization when given the chance. Love your image of the phone as a burning log - that is memorable and oh so fitting.
Great stuff, this has been a big paradigm shift for me in my journey in thinking about Classical Christian Education. Having the internet at our fingertips gives us the illusion of knowledge, because we tell ourselves that if we needed to recall information, we could via a Google search. But knowing that you can find information is not the same as knowing it. Thank you for this!
Thanks for your comment Cody. I think taking back charge of our mind and memory is foremost in remaining grounded in reality and our humanness. It takes a lot more effort and a great amount of commitment, but the 'easy' road has never been the right direction....
This is a very interesting piece. I have spent more than a decade studying in the Indian classical music tradition, which is for the most part aural, and therefore by definition a culture of memorisation. I had a fellow student once tell me to always learn a composition first by ear, and only later to read it, because if you do the reverse you will be more likely to forget it. I have memorised many compositions successfully using this method, and feel a certain pride that I can ‘carry these around with me’ wherever I go, though they need refreshing from time to time.
A word of caution though, there are downsides too. The compositions have limits to their length, as there comes a point where they are too long to accurately memorise. By contrast, in the western classical music tradition compositions such as The Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner take days to perform. This is only possible through sight reading, which by definition is not memorisation.
In the case of music I imagine a balance of these skills is ideal. The slow contemplative process of memorisation, as well as the rapid, hyper-alert practice of sight reading. The internet giving us access to unprecedented amounts of information is no bad thing, the problem is, as you point out, our relationship to that information and the inability to switch off from it.
Apr 5, 2023·edited Apr 5, 2023Liked by Ruth Gaskovski
Excellent piece here! I’ve understood in my being that the outsourcing of memory and the focus on critical thinking have been problems for a while. I’m only 32 but I can honestly say my memory isn’t what it ought to be and I know the problem is linked to me having a smartphone for the past 12-ish years. Thanks for laying out this problem so thoroughly. And thanks too for providing practical ways we can combat the issues with our families.
Oddly enough as well, I just read “A Pilgrims Creed” last night and was really taken with the idea of a family creed, so it is wonderful this was brought to my attention again today.
Thanks Derek! (Thank you also for so generously recommending School of the Unconformed!) I have never had a smartphone, mostly because I want to be unencumbered, and importantly because I know I would have very weak willpower...
I do believe we need a 'Pilgrims Creed' for today, to help us view reality through lenses grounded in faith and our basic humanity. Given how alluring and incessant the digital Sirens are, we need to continually reaffirm our resistance in word, thought, and deed.
Much food for thought - or memory - here. I can already tell that the observation on tools numbing the part of the body they amplify will be sticking with me for the long haul.
I was so encouraged by this essay, and I completely agree. I had the opportunity to be homeschooled by a wonderful community and recall memorizing Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" in high school. I can recite broad swaths. As an academic now, I have been trying to counter the current of " you can just find it" in my own mind and work. This has been a great exhortation!
There is an apocryphal story that students would come up to Harold Bloom, the literary scholar, during his walk between classes. If the student began quoting Paradise Lost, Bloom would continue the quotation until arriving at his next class. Memorization goals!
Thanks for your comment Carter. Gald to hear that the post gave you additional encouragement to counter the current. That is a great story about Harold Bloom - I cannot even start to imagine how much commitment memorizing Paradise Lost must take! We recently visited a pastor friend who is in his 70s. He wanted to provide an example of spoonerism to our children, and after thinking silently for a minute went on to recite the entire story of Rindercella and her sisty uglers which he had memorized at age 18. Not as impressive as Paradise Lost, but highly entertaining:)
You’ve just given me the best idea for having fun with my grandchildren whom I don’t see very often, the next time I do see them. I will memorize Rindercella and entertain them with it, and they will memorize it easily.
My children back in the day enjoyed memorizing Jabberwocky, and then submitted it to Spell Check at the computer, howling over the results.
One of my homeschooling children at about the age of twelve memorized all 120 stanzas of Macaulay’s “Horatio at the Bridge,” without telling anyone she was working on the project! She had been inspired by reading that Winston Churchill had done it.
We need a balanced approach. I studied in an education system that focused so much on rote learning and memorization that I struggled to develop my critical thinking skills as an undergraduate. By then, it was late because the thinking process had been ossified. It took a tremendous amount of unlearning and re-learning.
Thanks for your comment Sudeepa. Yes, when an educational approach is myopic and only focuses on one approach it can really stunt the learning process. I fully agree that there needs to be a balance.
Might the classical “tools of learning” of provide the balance? Rote learning in the Grammar stage, followed by connecting the parts in the Logic stage, and finally reasoning and arguing in the Rhetoric stage...? (My sketchy paraphrase of how it works)
Great article! I think one small distinction to add though would be that often the “critical thinking” that was imported into schools was not actually critical thinking but only post-modern deconstruction. Most Millennials and younger seem to think they are applying critical thinking as long as they are critical of any narrative or tradition. They deconstruct, break down, and attack the tradition thought or use, and that’s it. But that’s not real critical thinking. Real critical thinking involves analyzing the facts and evidence-- which indeed includes knowing the facts and evidence as you brilliantly point out-- as well as using correct logic and rational thinking, identifying biases and discerning between them, reflective thinking that also has a moral component to it, and even-handedness. Most of these skills are lacking in most Americans, especially the younger generations. So critical thinking, correctly defined, is good to teach people, the problem seems to be that American schools didn’t realize that the post-modern deconstructionists (ahem *Marxists*) were redefining “critical thinking” for their own destructive agenda.
one such as me who loves learning, but finds that the internet is doing just what Carr said it would do to my brain - especially my memory. And at 60, that’s a big concern! I’m going to take up the habit of a commonplace book, and use it to note what I’m reading: whether an online post or article, a book, or a podcast. And excerpt what really hits me - such as the quote you start this post with! (And I’ll start memorizing some poetry again...)
A commonplace book is a wonderful idea:) Sometimes I even recorded my kid's quotes when they were younger because they were so incredibly funny (and still make us laugh now). When I look back at mine and the quotes I recorded in it, I often have no memory of them until that moment, but am profoundly glad that I had taken the time to put them in my notebook. Having to teach kids poetry or speeches to remember helps me with the practice of memorizing (just as having to teach math has made me better at mental calculations than I ever was:)All the best with your memory work:)
I had a hospitality commonplace book, without even knowing it was that! I record menus of special meals and guests’ names. Guest books are but a quaint relic of a bygone era. My HC is an enhanced guest book as I enjoy reviewing what we prepared and served. I make one of my garden too, with diagrams, what I planted and grew where.
What a great idea, to put all that kind of information in one place. I was given two lovely notebooks for Christmas- one of them I just this moment will be my hospitality notebook 👌
John Holt pointed out that if we truly allowed critical thinking in the public schools, the first thing the kids would ask is "How come I gotta be in your class?"
I've done some memory work with my children at home. We've memorized the 23rd Psalm, Scripture verses, prayers, basic personal info., poetry (Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" comes to mind), etc. I'd like to do more, so may check out some of the resources you link in your article.
I find that if I have something memorized, I can call it back to mind nearly anytime and turn it around enjoying the beauty of it or teasing out its deeper meaning. At different times, I see different facets of meaning come out of the things I've memorized. I can also compare and contrast it with other works. I believe there's great value in memorizing things and you can't go wrong to do so.
These are really compelling points. I will confess as a current college student, that I have very much undervalued memorization (as have the academic institutions more broadly, frankly) for that of critical thought. In fact, there are many tests that I will not study for, simply because I realize that I can quickly piece together the answer based on context clues in the question. However, it has lead to me getting towards the end of my degree and feeling that I frankly do not know much more than when I started. This is however, further complicated by the fact that fields like my degree, which are social sciences, have so much information constantly in flux, that it seems very difficult to "know" anything. It is generally more impressive to be a fast scourer of scientific journals than it is of knowing information on hand. Memory is certainly a dying virtue in the digitized academic sphere.
Thanks for your comment Ian. I had a similar experience coming out of university. I feel that I received a re-education once I started teaching my kids, as I was learning alongside them (even got to finally memorize the periodic table). I agree that committing information from the social sciences to memory is likely a challenging task given its flux. Yet there are passages that bear on the social sciences (like the Socrates quote at the beginning of the article) that seem worthwhile remembering. Training the mind to remember deeply, whatever the topic or form may be, will in time bear fruit in all academic endeavours.
This is a bitter pill to swallow. I've celebrated the fact that I've been able to allow my memory to rest because of the internet for years now. Even as a prescriber of medication, I find that while I have some things memorized, many I just look up on the spot with the patient in front of me. On one hand this is wonderful, but I hadn't considered the other side. I don't disagree with anything you said. I'll be thinking on this.
Thanks for your comment Paul. I think the part I would focus on is decreasing continuous digital distraction, giving our mind time to actually process and consolidate memories. I do not think it means that we have to commit everything to memory, but rather nurture and develop our ability to memorize, sometimes choosing the more challenging option rather than 'easy knowledge', and teaching our kids to hone their attention and focus so that they will be able to actually use their memory.
I love that. Thanks for challenging my preexisting beliefs =)
Memorizing a piece of music or the lyrics to a song is also a fantastic way to practice your memory skills! I still remember the piece I played my my piano exam over 30 years ago!
A very interesting analysis. I loved memorizing poems as a child, which I did purely of my own initiative. I have always felt memorization was unfairly judged by supposed elites, but couldn’t always articulate just how or why.
Another way memorization is helpful is in conversation. If you can actually remember facts and stories you can have much more interesting conversations. I struggle with this: I am always forgetting details of what I read and so when I try to describe it I come up blank a lot. If I write about what I read it does help. I’m also trying some visual journaling lately.
That's a really good point Síochána. A richer foundation of knowledge and vocabulary gained through memorization would also fertilize conversation. I keep a little book where I copy interesting. funny, or particularly deep quotes (many of them by Dickens). In his 1512 textbook 'De Copia' Erasmus encouraged readers to keep a 'commonplace' book to note down, "occurrences of striking words, archaic or novel diction, brilliant flashes of style, adages, examples, and pithy remarks worth memorizing." These commonplace books were all the rage back then and were even regarded as necessary tools for 'the cultivation of an educated mind.'
And these Commonplace books were surely all handwritten too, ensuring greater retention.
I've been thinking about writing an article on a very similar topic to this for months now, but just haven't been able to compress my ideas on it into linear thoughts.
I write a music-focused substack, so it's addressing this idea from the perspective of a lyric...
"Like those Indians, lost in the rain forest, forced to drag burning wood wherever they went. They had all forgotten how to start a fire"
This image always jumped out at me as being so... heavy, anxiety-inducing even. Now I can't stop thinking of smart phones as burning logs.
I would love to read your perspective from a music-angle on this topic. The dissolution of memory affects all areas of our lives, but I feel hopeful when I see how readily children engage in applying their minds to memorization when given the chance. Love your image of the phone as a burning log - that is memorable and oh so fitting.
Great stuff, this has been a big paradigm shift for me in my journey in thinking about Classical Christian Education. Having the internet at our fingertips gives us the illusion of knowledge, because we tell ourselves that if we needed to recall information, we could via a Google search. But knowing that you can find information is not the same as knowing it. Thank you for this!
Thanks for your comment Cody. I think taking back charge of our mind and memory is foremost in remaining grounded in reality and our humanness. It takes a lot more effort and a great amount of commitment, but the 'easy' road has never been the right direction....
This is a very interesting piece. I have spent more than a decade studying in the Indian classical music tradition, which is for the most part aural, and therefore by definition a culture of memorisation. I had a fellow student once tell me to always learn a composition first by ear, and only later to read it, because if you do the reverse you will be more likely to forget it. I have memorised many compositions successfully using this method, and feel a certain pride that I can ‘carry these around with me’ wherever I go, though they need refreshing from time to time.
A word of caution though, there are downsides too. The compositions have limits to their length, as there comes a point where they are too long to accurately memorise. By contrast, in the western classical music tradition compositions such as The Ring Cycle by Richard Wagner take days to perform. This is only possible through sight reading, which by definition is not memorisation.
In the case of music I imagine a balance of these skills is ideal. The slow contemplative process of memorisation, as well as the rapid, hyper-alert practice of sight reading. The internet giving us access to unprecedented amounts of information is no bad thing, the problem is, as you point out, our relationship to that information and the inability to switch off from it.
Dom, thank you for adding a such a detailed and insightful musical perspective to this piece!
Excellent piece here! I’ve understood in my being that the outsourcing of memory and the focus on critical thinking have been problems for a while. I’m only 32 but I can honestly say my memory isn’t what it ought to be and I know the problem is linked to me having a smartphone for the past 12-ish years. Thanks for laying out this problem so thoroughly. And thanks too for providing practical ways we can combat the issues with our families.
Oddly enough as well, I just read “A Pilgrims Creed” last night and was really taken with the idea of a family creed, so it is wonderful this was brought to my attention again today.
Thanks Derek! (Thank you also for so generously recommending School of the Unconformed!) I have never had a smartphone, mostly because I want to be unencumbered, and importantly because I know I would have very weak willpower...
I do believe we need a 'Pilgrims Creed' for today, to help us view reality through lenses grounded in faith and our basic humanity. Given how alluring and incessant the digital Sirens are, we need to continually reaffirm our resistance in word, thought, and deed.
Much food for thought - or memory - here. I can already tell that the observation on tools numbing the part of the body they amplify will be sticking with me for the long haul.
I was so encouraged by this essay, and I completely agree. I had the opportunity to be homeschooled by a wonderful community and recall memorizing Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" in high school. I can recite broad swaths. As an academic now, I have been trying to counter the current of " you can just find it" in my own mind and work. This has been a great exhortation!
There is an apocryphal story that students would come up to Harold Bloom, the literary scholar, during his walk between classes. If the student began quoting Paradise Lost, Bloom would continue the quotation until arriving at his next class. Memorization goals!
Thanks for your comment Carter. Gald to hear that the post gave you additional encouragement to counter the current. That is a great story about Harold Bloom - I cannot even start to imagine how much commitment memorizing Paradise Lost must take! We recently visited a pastor friend who is in his 70s. He wanted to provide an example of spoonerism to our children, and after thinking silently for a minute went on to recite the entire story of Rindercella and her sisty uglers which he had memorized at age 18. Not as impressive as Paradise Lost, but highly entertaining:)
You’ve just given me the best idea for having fun with my grandchildren whom I don’t see very often, the next time I do see them. I will memorize Rindercella and entertain them with it, and they will memorize it easily.
My children back in the day enjoyed memorizing Jabberwocky, and then submitted it to Spell Check at the computer, howling over the results.
One of my homeschooling children at about the age of twelve memorized all 120 stanzas of Macaulay’s “Horatio at the Bridge,” without telling anyone she was working on the project! She had been inspired by reading that Winston Churchill had done it.
We need a balanced approach. I studied in an education system that focused so much on rote learning and memorization that I struggled to develop my critical thinking skills as an undergraduate. By then, it was late because the thinking process had been ossified. It took a tremendous amount of unlearning and re-learning.
Thanks for your comment Sudeepa. Yes, when an educational approach is myopic and only focuses on one approach it can really stunt the learning process. I fully agree that there needs to be a balance.
Might the classical “tools of learning” of provide the balance? Rote learning in the Grammar stage, followed by connecting the parts in the Logic stage, and finally reasoning and arguing in the Rhetoric stage...? (My sketchy paraphrase of how it works)
Great article! I think one small distinction to add though would be that often the “critical thinking” that was imported into schools was not actually critical thinking but only post-modern deconstruction. Most Millennials and younger seem to think they are applying critical thinking as long as they are critical of any narrative or tradition. They deconstruct, break down, and attack the tradition thought or use, and that’s it. But that’s not real critical thinking. Real critical thinking involves analyzing the facts and evidence-- which indeed includes knowing the facts and evidence as you brilliantly point out-- as well as using correct logic and rational thinking, identifying biases and discerning between them, reflective thinking that also has a moral component to it, and even-handedness. Most of these skills are lacking in most Americans, especially the younger generations. So critical thinking, correctly defined, is good to teach people, the problem seems to be that American schools didn’t realize that the post-modern deconstructionists (ahem *Marxists*) were redefining “critical thinking” for their own destructive agenda.
one such as me who loves learning, but finds that the internet is doing just what Carr said it would do to my brain - especially my memory. And at 60, that’s a big concern! I’m going to take up the habit of a commonplace book, and use it to note what I’m reading: whether an online post or article, a book, or a podcast. And excerpt what really hits me - such as the quote you start this post with! (And I’ll start memorizing some poetry again...)
A commonplace book is a wonderful idea:) Sometimes I even recorded my kid's quotes when they were younger because they were so incredibly funny (and still make us laugh now). When I look back at mine and the quotes I recorded in it, I often have no memory of them until that moment, but am profoundly glad that I had taken the time to put them in my notebook. Having to teach kids poetry or speeches to remember helps me with the practice of memorizing (just as having to teach math has made me better at mental calculations than I ever was:)All the best with your memory work:)
I had a hospitality commonplace book, without even knowing it was that! I record menus of special meals and guests’ names. Guest books are but a quaint relic of a bygone era. My HC is an enhanced guest book as I enjoy reviewing what we prepared and served. I make one of my garden too, with diagrams, what I planted and grew where.
What a great idea, to put all that kind of information in one place. I was given two lovely notebooks for Christmas- one of them I just this moment will be my hospitality notebook 👌
Thank you for sharing!
Shared with my sister, who also homeschools. Nice essay!
John Holt pointed out that if we truly allowed critical thinking in the public schools, the first thing the kids would ask is "How come I gotta be in your class?"
The smartest kids in public school May be the dropouts.
I've done some memory work with my children at home. We've memorized the 23rd Psalm, Scripture verses, prayers, basic personal info., poetry (Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" comes to mind), etc. I'd like to do more, so may check out some of the resources you link in your article.
I find that if I have something memorized, I can call it back to mind nearly anytime and turn it around enjoying the beauty of it or teasing out its deeper meaning. At different times, I see different facets of meaning come out of the things I've memorized. I can also compare and contrast it with other works. I believe there's great value in memorizing things and you can't go wrong to do so.