> My response to that would be "for real critical thinking, you need memorization as a starting point. You can't think critically about the politics of the Midd

> My response to that would be "for real critical thinking, you need memorization as a starting point. You can't think critically about the politics of the Middle East until you can point to Israel and Gaza on a map!" Not true IMHO. You can map it to a some sort of neighbouring countries graph and a few other facts.