Memorizing facts isn't innately valuable -- it's valuable because it makes critical thinking and problem solving easier. If you have a larger working memory (be

Memorizing facts isn't innately valuable -- it's valuable because it makes critical thinking and problem solving easier. If you have a larger working memory (because you've memorized lots of things before), you'll be able to hold a larger system in your head to analyze. Unfortunately, the educational system usually separates the memorization phase from the problem-solving phase far too much to establish the causal link. Using chemistry as an example, I think the (incorrect) reasoning runs something like this: - Most good chemists know the periodic table by heart. - Therefore, step 1 to being a good chemist is to memorize the entire periodic table. They have the best of intentions -- every field requires you to know some basic concepts before you can start manipulating them. But when I took a math class in college, we didn't start off by memorizing the definitions of groups, rings, and fields. We just started doing proofs. Everyone learned the definitions fairly quickly just as a side effect of looking them up often enough to solve the problems. So the far better approach is just to memorize "as needed," which also makes the memories more likely to stick around in the brain. A final example, using history: Originally, I detested it as a subject solidly in the "memorization" category. But I finally got a teacher who forced it into the problem-solving category. Her exams were essays, where we had to write a position paper arguing for a specific side of a political debate. This immediately made those random memorized facts useful, because they could be brought in to support a larger conceptual argument. This teacher was somewhat of a local hero for her incredibly high passing rates -- her students actually learned history, while others merely memorized assorted facts.