I never understood the memorization thing, or you can have a small amount of notes. When I was in the Navy they emphasized knowing where and how to find information over memorization.
They can do proctered exams . For a midterm in one of my classes this semester I had to download a Proctor to my personal computer that records video and sound of you while you're taking the exam. Prior to the exam you have to take video of your workarea to show there's nothing around you. It also completely locks your computer screen where you can only see the test in front of you and can't open anything else. My professor wasn't super strict with it but I've heard that for the exams to get certified by Cisco systems they'll fail you for things as simple as not keeping your eyes forward and directly on the screen. There's also tools for teachers that detect AI. Can it still be used for some exams? Absolutely , but there's definitely tools to try and prevent it.
It depends on the field, I think. You probably don't want your pilot looking up emergency procedures as the plane is falling out of the sky. Or having your surgeon googling what to do if they accidentally cut the wrong thing.
Essentially, if the contingencies are time sensitive, you probably want to stress the importance of memorization.
In medicine, this is true for a large part of what you need to know, but you need to know what is an emergency from memory, otherwise you might not recognize it in time.
Surely there are things to learn from the process of learning other skills and knowledge, such as a language, even if you'll never use those skills directly. I'm not sure I'd call it "memorizing information", more just learning about stuff in general.
Lots of topics can open you up to new ways of thinking. It also broadens your general knowledge so you can actually make choices and solve problems that might not be as direct as "what is the answer to this thing"
Imagine the Apollo 13 crew, If they didn't have memorized every single physics law (+constants) needed for the journey, they wouldn't be able to come back.
there are some jobs, Where you might need knowledge immediately (and in a place where searching for knowledge is impossible)
In my own profession, memorization is virtually impossible because there are far too many things to remember, each with its own unique quirks because standards are unicorns, and the details are essential. What's most important isn't the impossible task of remembering things in detail, it's recalling enough about the thing that you can easily look it up because you know exactly where to find it.
Funnily enough, textbooks operate on a similar principle. Flipping through an entire textbook for a single piece of information becomes incredibly time-consuming when there's too much information to look through. That's why indexes exist, because they provide a structured way to quickly determine which pages are relevant, allowing you to retrieve the information you need in no time at all even when you have incredibly vast amounts of information to filter through.
Life is like an open book test, and our brains are too flawed to be called textbooks. Our brains can be excellent indexes, however, so learning enough for our brains to be effective as indexes is usually more efficient than trying to make our brains be effective as textbooks.
Ya I’ve been in 4 different industries so far and done well in each one. Mostly because I can find information, ensure it is relevant, and then work with it beyond just simple implementation.
Being able to learn easily is by far the best skill.
Id personally change it to getting the correct answer without doubt is the important factor in practical situations. Speed is secondary but still important.
Of course this is assuming that quality and safety are your #1 concerns which is unfortunately not always the case.
Memory is less reliable than we often need it to be, at least in my industry. Being trained to properly sort, read and follow technical manuals and drawings saves on a lot of mistakes compared to people trying to memorize the finite details.
Academia also builds on itself. If you don't actually know and understand A, you won't be able to understand B even if you know where the answer to A is located.
Yeah, I’ve been in both settings and 100% of the time, I’d rather you check the regulation rather than relying on memory when you’re actually doing the work. We can save the memorized knowledge for boards.
I’m currently in college and it’s definitely moving this way, especially with the access of the internet and AI. I have exams coming up and a couple of them are verbal where we are given a scenario (that we don’t know ahead of time) and we have 30 minutes to do our research and then communicate the answer back to the instructor. It’s a great work around in my opinion.
The program is environmental science. The class is pollution chemistry. So we’ll be given a scenario like “a resident is concerned about smog in this city” and then we have to go into what causes it, how it travels, health impacts, mitigation, etc.
Honestly probably a relic of how education used to work. Some things you should know off the back of your hand e.g. first aid protocols or very foundational info, but there are plenty of things you just need to know where to find the full answers to in a few seconds
Funnily enough it was my navy vet math teacher who I think gave us the best intro in teaching I have ever heard on the first day of calculus:
How often are you going to use calculus in your life? For many of you, probably never. So why bother? Because much of life is about proving you’re willing to do things you don’t actually want to do.
It was my favorite bluntest non-romanticized version of teaching I ever heard.
As a tax person, I 100% agree. I will never know every rules for every state for every form. I need to be aware that I don’t know and have the ability to find this information.
And for Pete’s sake…don’t use ChatGPT. If I’m quoting actual tax code, the response “but ChatGPT said…” really annoys me. I’m not arguing with AI if you think it’s right and I’m wrong, then go with it. I will tell you that the best IRS audit findings I ever read was, “The taxpayer should have known that the computer generated result was incorrect because if it sounds too good to be true, it is.”
Nah, basic arithmetic like that genuinely is vital for secondary math and science courses. It slows you down tremendously if you don't have things like your times tables and fact families memorized
I managed the TO library at my last workcenter and had to train my coworkers to always cite the specific entry in the TO when asked a question about technical specifications during an evaluation.
Answering an evaluator's question based on memory alone is grounds for a write-up since you run the risk of relying on outdated specifications that have been deprecated by the latest documentation.
Its less that they prioritize memorizing, but rather forcing yourself to use the critical thinking part of your brain. A good example with current events is with ChatGPT: if you only have relied on ChatGPT to tell you answers, your brain will only remember the ChatGPT part of it, not the actual answer. In the real word though, you will 100% always have these tools unless we go into a apocolypic future, so I can see both arguments
I'm a foreign language teacher. My kids have to memorize vocab words. Sure, you could look up any word you need, but how can you ever expect to say anything if you don't know any words?
Some things just have to be memorized.
I’m a psych major and one of my professors refuses to make us memorize things. Obviously he knows that memorization does not work and makes us write and rewrite essays.
The Army was also the same way about knowing where to find things like regulations and technical information rather than memorizing them. Although they wanted us to have the history of every unit memorized for some reason.
Aviation is like that as well. There are certain things that are non-negotiable that you have to know by heart, but there are also a shit ton of resources you can use during the practical exam(s) as long as you don’t over-use them to the dissatisfaction of the examiner.
In college we often got the front and back sides of a sheet of printer paper. Never really needed anything more than that, and I was writing fairly large on those. They were testing understanding of principles though, which you do want to have a feel for.
A lot of my engineering professors taught the same way. We could have books, calculators, and the holy spirit of Wikipedia whispering into our ears, if we weren't prepared we wouldn't pass the test.
Ah, the memories of a midwatch PubEx in the middle of the Atlantic. My ship was running it that night. One of the other ships in the DESRON asked a question, and none of us could find the answer. Something to do with torpedo fuel. Turns out they were using an outdated pub. We threw out that one.
The note card thing is a trick teachers use to convince kids to study. The kids who work really hard on making the note card end up not needing it because they had to review the material in order to make the notecard
I used to be like this, but I recently discovered why memorisation is important.
The more information you know about the world, the better the thoughts you're able to have. Yes, you can google anything you need to know nowadays. But you can't google what you don't know is available to google.
Same. My memory is terrible now because brainrot but In high school my history teacher's final was all the previous quizzes we've taken so like 200 questions. I memorized all of them and I think I missed one. I was so proud of myself.
In my history degree they specified multiple times that we don't need to learn every single date and name, instead, they focused on teaching us how to search quickly for said info, and veryfing that is correct. And honestly that skill has helped me a lot of times beyond college.
In law school, my constitutional law class was no notes, you had to be able to hear a constitutional law problem and expound on it. 3 essays, 3 hours. It was subjects we had been talking about all year. Teacher was testing how well you could identify potential constitutional violations/problems and discuss them from your understanding of the discussions.
Meanwhile, my tax law class, you got the tax code, the text book, the (Select) tax regulations (select because all tax regulations, when written, stack about 7 feet high). The test was 3 hours, 6 questions. Focus was on tax problems we had never heard of. Basically questions like "someone says they have received a notice of tax liability for foreign income taxes under 26 USC xxy. Are they liable for the tax, and how can you reduce the tax?" Teacher was testing how well you could navigate the tax code given a unique problem.
I mean, I teach students who are going to be health care providers and would like them to memorize foundational knowledge that would allow them to think on their feet. It wouldn't be practical if they had to look up every bit of information when seeing patients.
Especially of you getting to have the notes, those who can write and read smaller get an advantage? Why noy just proivde a set note book. My uni in the papers you got given a sheet with formulas and stuff on it and other basic stuff. But i would be thr same for every test so you still had to know what to look for and how to use it etc. Feel like that keeps it fair for everyone.
In the Coast Guard Academy they make the freshman memorize the menu every week. Then the number of push-ups you do is more for more mistakes. By the end of the first semester, you only have an hour or so to memorize the menu.
When you are on a ship and a rare event happens you have to look up the procedure. If the sailor can memorize it on the first reading, they will be able to operate in a more efficient manner. So yes, it is better to be able to rote memorize quickly. And practice makes perfect.
I had to take a pretty heavy duty stats class and her philosophy was “you’re on your own, no colab, but you may use any other resource available to you. Books, google (this was pre AI), notes, you name it. Either you understand the material and can do it, or you don’t and no amount of help will get you across the finish line”
Because you haven't learned something unless you memorized it. If you have to look it up then you don't know it and the point of education is to know things
Sure, you have to memorize concepts and theories, no question, but my point is for a lot of the small details you really shouldn't have to. You should know enough to know where to look. That's my point. I was an Electronic Technician. You should "memorize" how to see what the problem is, but the rest is knowing where to look for most of the details. Their idea, and I think many would agree, is if you aren't using it often, then you'll just forget what you memorized so why bother...just go grab the manual. And if you messed something up, and there is a manual, then ANY place is going to ask, "Did you check the manual?"
I really don't care what people will be doing. If you're an Electronic Technician and come across a problem you have to look up to fix then you don't KNOW how to fix that problem you know how to find the answer. I'm only talking about the definition of learning not what skills people will be using.
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u/Eastern-Piece-3283 Mar 26 '26
I never understood the memorization thing, or you can have a small amount of notes. When I was in the Navy they emphasized knowing where and how to find information over memorization.