I agree with you. Older minds analyze better than younger minds. They have more knowledge to bring to bear on a topic. Younger minds memorize better than older minds--repeated things make more of a lasting imprint.
Both young and old need to do both, but the best results come from using this time-limited memorization advantage strategically, not haphazardly.
Unfortunately, that's not what we do (in the US). Memorization is described by progressive educrats as "drill and kill". Instead of carefully analyzing what should be memorized to provide the most strategic leverage, they deprecate it almost entirely. Why put a lot of effort, they ask, into memorizing anything in the 21st Century? Multiplication tables? Everyone will have a calculator, they answer. Geography? Google! No, they insist, understanding is what matters: concepts, not facts, as if people reason better with facts stored at Google than with facts in their own heads.
Then they rush students through too much material too quickly for serious analysis. Our minds have multiple modes of operation, and when we don't have time to figure things out, Plan B is to stop analyzing and just try to remember--use memory and metaknowledge about tests to pass. The writer's daughter was explicitly aware of that mode switch.
So we end up with a "progressive" education industry denigrating memorization as a knuckle-dragging, traditional practice with the result that, instead of eliminating memorization itself, they just eliminate the "strategic" part.
Both young and old need to do both, but the best results come from using this time-limited memorization advantage strategically, not haphazardly.
Unfortunately, that's not what we do (in the US). Memorization is described by progressive educrats as "drill and kill". Instead of carefully analyzing what should be memorized to provide the most strategic leverage, they deprecate it almost entirely. Why put a lot of effort, they ask, into memorizing anything in the 21st Century? Multiplication tables? Everyone will have a calculator, they answer. Geography? Google! No, they insist, understanding is what matters: concepts, not facts, as if people reason better with facts stored at Google than with facts in their own heads.
Then they rush students through too much material too quickly for serious analysis. Our minds have multiple modes of operation, and when we don't have time to figure things out, Plan B is to stop analyzing and just try to remember--use memory and metaknowledge about tests to pass. The writer's daughter was explicitly aware of that mode switch.
So we end up with a "progressive" education industry denigrating memorization as a knuckle-dragging, traditional practice with the result that, instead of eliminating memorization itself, they just eliminate the "strategic" part.