[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Learning reasons for interpretations will make me a better official.

Originally Posted by Raymond

... has always been my MO...

And mine also.

As both a student and a teacher, I have always stressed understanding as a necessary supplement to rote memorization.

Back in college, my girlfriend (to become my fiance, wife, and ex-wife) and I always studied together. We were both studying to be teachers, she elementary education, me secondary education science.

She would study by rote memorization, repeating things to herself silently, or sometimes out loud. When I would question her about what she learned, she would often not have a real understanding of what she learned. But it worked for her, she graduated summa cum laude and had an outstanding career as a reading teacher.

Rote memorization never worked for me (maybe because I have a poor memory). When I would study I would combine memorization with a thorough understanding of the topic. Why do I need to learn this? How does this match up with past learning? How does this relate to similar topics? How can this be extrapolated? How might I possibly confuse this with similar topics? What are examples of this topic?

Same thing when I taught middle school science. While my students had to memorize some things, I often tried to teach them using my system of memorization combined with a thorough understanding of the topic. Even something that many teachers usually taught using only rote memory, like element symbols (that I memorized poorly in high school). I would explain to my students how these symbols came to be. Why can't Nickel be N? Why can't Radon be Ra? Why are few element symbols based on Latin? What's Wolfram? Most teachers (like my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Dalton) would simply pass out an element symbol handout and say, "Memorize it".

And I would allow my students to take the element symbol quiz multiple times. The grade wasn't important, learning the symbols was important because we were going to move on to actually "using" the symbols (with periodic tables that didn't have element names, just symbols).

Note: Back in high school, I struggled with memorizing element symbols, especially the Latin element symbols. My Dad gave me a silly, possibly stupid, hint that I remember to this day. "When the Mercury goes up in the thermometer, the grass grows high, thus Mercury's symbol is Hg, high grass". Worked for me, easier than telling me that the symbol is based on the Latin (or Greek) word for Mercury, hydrargyrum.

While I'm sure that there are exceptions (like my girlfriend), by combining memorization with a thorough understanding leads to longer lived learning.