Do You Waste Time Memorizing? by Ruth Beechick | HOMESCHOOLING TODAY Magazine

How much time do you waste memorizing? If your children are memorizing lists of facts, it’s practically all wasted. Here I will suggest what to do and what not to do with history dates, state capitals, and math facts. Then I will end with Bible and literature matters where memory time is not wasted.

History Dates

I have long suspected that the high interest in memorizing dates in history is misplaced enthusiasm. Some homeschoolers do this because they think it will help improve test scores and others think it helps with understanding history.

Textbook tests may ask for dates that are included in their chapters, but the annual achievement tests and the college entrance exams do not ask for memory of dates; they are after higher thinking abilities. As for helping either the children or their parents to understand history better, I am finding more evidence that it does not help at all. If the idea is to get meaning, then you have to think beyond the dates anyway. When did Pharaoh X live? When did the Middle Kingdom collapse? When was the Exodus? Those memorized dates do not fit together meaningfully. At least two of them in most books are wrong, but date memorizers do not notice. They think they know history because they know the dates.

Many history books try to fit meaning into those dates this way: they say that if the Exodus happened at all it would have been during the reign of Ramses II because he was such a strong pharaoh that a few slaves could leave and it would not damage his kingdom. Bible believers know that the Exodus drastically damaged the kingdom, so by meaning not by Egypt’s incorrect dates they can fit the collapse of the Middle Kingdom to the time of the Exodus. Notice the order: fit history to the Bible, not fit the Bible to today’s incorrect history.

This meaning approach helps children understand history. The date memorizing does not.

A few important anchor dates are worth memorizing. One for American children is 1776. If they are reading that Thomas Jefferson was the third president, they know it is a few years after that anchor date. If they are reading about colonial events, they know it is before that. Understanding separate colonies under foreign rule and how and why they united to rule themselves is the important history learning here. Reciting the dates pales beside that.

State Capitals

If you have workbooks or games or drills so your children can spend hours memorizing the state capitals, then consider how often in later life they will use that information. It is worth playing the game or labeling the map so children at least hear of the capitals and learn a few things such as that the big cities of New York and Los Angeles are not capitals. If you must memorize, move on to the national anthem or “God Bless America” instead.

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Something children will use now and then as adults is the two-letter state abbreviations. A meaningful way to work on those is to have the children pretend they are making up the system. Discussing the four A states shows most techniques. Two begin with AL and two begin with AR. How can you best distinguish which is which? Three begin and end withA so forget about using first and last letter as with Iowa and Louisiana.

Proceed with other letters. Ms are the hardest. After this kind of thinking the children will know most abbreviations or be able to figure them out. Again, there is no need to drill and test. If they should need one someday and are not sure what it is, they can look it up.

Capitals of some foreign nations are useful to know because news reporters often use them to stand for the whole country, as Beijing for China. You can help children learn these one at a time as they hear the current events.

Math Facts

Pushing textbooks and workbooks down to primary grades has done a great disservice to our young children. What young children need is experience with real numbers and objects, not with the abstract symbols we read and write in books. Five is a number, and 5 is its abstract digit. Five cookies are concrete objects. Save the abstractions until children have good understanding of numbers. Learning at incidental times to recognize digits, as 6 on a clock, will not hurt. But delay working problems with digits until after children understand the numbers well.

With enough life experiences of setting the table, playing games, and handling blocks or marbles, they learn to see and know the addition and subtraction facts up to totals of twelve. That’s real knowledge, not just meaningless memory.

I see parents sharing creative ideas for games and activities to provide plenty of experience with numbers. If you do not have time for those inventions, at least be aware of the need so you can take advantage of daily situations. “Put one cookie on the plate for each child.” “Bring two more forks to the table.” And so on.

Children will need a little raw memorizing with higher numbers, especially the multiplication facts. But if they first understand the lower facts, they will understand what’s happening with the higher facts, even if they cannot visualize them.

Bible and Literature

After you save memorizing time on history dates, state capitals, and arithmetic facts, then you can use it for life-enriching memory. Bible memory comes first, and all Christian homeschoolers work on that. You can add table prayers and bedtime prayers. Add poems. Add other literature that captures your family’s imagination. Add the preamble to the Constitution or a couple of sentences from the Declaration of Independence. Some people like to memorize Shakespeare. Not me. But I liked “Casey at the Bat” and the Gettysburg Address as a child. Choose items as they come along that are meaningful to your family.

Literary memorizing strengthens language learning while it fills the mind with ennobling thoughts. An eight-year-old memorizing Bible verses (KJV) said, “I love the language of the Bible. It’s so beautiful.”

You probably often use a phrase from Scripture in conversation with someone. Or maybe phrases or longer passages run through your mind as you drive or fall asleep. How much better than lists of dates or state capitals! That is the richer life you lead because of meaningful things worth memorizing.

©2009 Homeschooling Today magazine, Nehemiah Four, LLC