My niece, whose first year of high school starts in a few days, was telling me about an assignment all entering freshmen received sometime during the summer. By the first day of school, she has to be able to fill in an outline map with the names of every country in the world and know the capital of each country. Also she has to be able to do the same with the U.S. states and the Canadian provinces.
I’m not sure what my attitude is towards this sort of work. On the one hand, it seems silly to devote all the effort this will take to memorizing information that is readily available in books, and especially, on the Internet, which every ninth grade student in this school is completely familiar with and quite expert at using.
But I also see a considerable value in internalizing a more-or-less accurate picture of the political geography of the world, if for no other reason, than to have a start at understanding current world events. If you can picture the physical relationship of Russia and Georgia (for the most part, a little-known entity), it’s certainly easier to understand the background for animosity between the two countries. And it’s not really possible to understand the hostilities of the Middle East without knowing where the various states involved are located in relation to each other.
I remember having to memorize the names of all the English monarchs from Henry VIII to the current throne holder. I believe that was required of us in eighth grade World History. If anything, it seems of far less value than my niece’s assignment, certainly once I was finished with World History. But little did I realize how useful that string of kings and queens would be when trying to fall asleep---far better than counting sheep.
And I’m still word perfect on Shakespeare’s 29th and 116th sonnets, which I learned in a college freshman English Lit. class. Little could I anticipate how comforting they would be at difficult times in later life.
So what’s a head for? To memorize seemingly useless information? Perhaps a better question is what is useless information?
Does this bring to mind any of your memorization experiences that turned out to be more useful than you could have believed them to be? If so, please tell us about them.
Paula “When in the course of human events…” Gifford