In Defense of Memorization
Ahh, Bloom’s Taxonomy. From the first days of teacher prep to this week’s PD, I think we have all been beaten to death with this lovely little list. Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create; this alleged hierarchy has evaluation forms everywhere looking to see that students are engaging in “higher-order thinking” thanks to teachers asking “higher-order questions” and assigning “higher-order tasks”.
A recurring—and annoying—feature of any PD or admin advocating this conveniently ignores the typical and illustrative representation of this list: a pyramid, with “remember” at the bottom. “This is the 21st Century, they have Google and AI in their pockets, why do they need to memorize anything?? They should be analyzing and synthesizing, not drilling vocab!!” While I understand the sentiment—higher-order thinking skills are a necessary prerequisite for making oneself competitive for advanced studies and jobs, especially as AI automates more and more routine tasks—I feel that it is dangerously misguided. The idea that higher-order thinking should supplant lower-order thinking relies on the erroneous assumption that the latter is not a prerequisite for the former. Remember is at the bottom of the pyramid for a reason!!! Students must have a substantial number of connected facts that they can easily remember if they want to be able to apply or analyze or evaluate or create.
Facts in long-term memory are the foundation of all higher-order thinking. Your students, yes even your advanced ones, need to drill facts and figures if you want them to be able to problem-solve and engage in higher-order thinking.
I don’t have the book anymore, but I’m pretty confident Daniel Willingham hit on this in his book, Why Don’t Students Like School? (a must-read for teachers). He talked about how you can’t teach students HOW to think if they do not have a repository of well-connected ideas to think ABOUT. Without background knowledge stored in long-term memory, students cannot make the connections that are emblematic of higher-order thinking. Memorization, sticking facts into long-term memory, is the necessary first step for creative thought, with forming connections between those facts following closely behind.
But-but-but Google/AI/etc!! Memorizing is so 20th Century!! Well if students have to look up a fact to use it, that act of keeping it in their working memory (since it isn’t effectively stored in long-term memory) means that less of their very limited processing capacity is available to actually think with.
Therefore, I strongly believe memorization needs to be a routine and foundational activity in my classroom. I am deliberate in pointing out to students things they need to memorize when I lecture and why. When they’re stuck on a problem, I always start my questioning at the remember level: what does that word mean? What does that variable mean? What does that equation say? From there I move to understand: what does that mean physically about the object? Only once I know they have those pieces can we then work on building them up to the higher-order skill they’re applying at that moment. If they are stuck at the remember level, I don’t push through and try to handhold them through application. I tell them to refer back to their notes and work the facts into their head. Once it’s there, we can move on. Doesn’t always work, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not often asking the same questions of the same kid repeatedly.
Seeing how often my students were failing to remember and understand, I have started working memorization drills into my classes, especially AP Physics. I’m also working on creating flashcard sets for AP that cover the key vocab, variables, and equations of each unit, plus a set on problem categorization (i.e. identifying that a problem would be solved with Newton’s Second Law) and a set on problem-solving strategies (i.e. what to do when you recognize the problem is solved with Newton’s Second Law) (these will be linked here once they’re made). These could be a quick and easy resource to give your kids a strategy for memorizing in AP Physics I.
Memorization is not outdated or ancillary—it’s foundational. By dedicating time to help students commit key facts to memory, we enable them to focus their cognitive energy on solving problems and making connections. While advanced courses demand we spend most of our class time doing problem-solving, spending time drilling facts, vocabulary, equations, and other basics will pay off substantially in the long run. If you’re interested in incorporating these strategies into your own classroom, check out my flashcard sets and other resources (coming soon).
