I was thinking about memorization as something that people--children anyway, maybe not adults--used to do "back in the day" but they don't seem to do as much now.
I was not yet old enough to go to kindergarten when I memorized the 23rd Psalm, for church.
We all memorized and repeated the Pledge of Allegiance at school.
A man in his eighties whom I knew in the '90s recited the Rudyard Kipling poem, "Gunga Din" for us one evening--unplanned.
...It was 'Din! Din! Din!'
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
'Hi! Ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!'...
His grade-school years would have been filled with even more memorizing than mine were, because when you look at the 1920s and '30s--the further back you go, the more memorization was valued as a learning method.
It doesn't mean memorizing is good, or bad--education like every other endeavor and institution evolves and has methods and approaches that come in and out of fashion. (Although serious educators probably wouldn't like us to call it "fashion.")
(Example: when I started working as a lobbyist at the state legislature, there were some people practically ready to have a "war" over whether or not children should be taught to read using the phonics method....)
And--I forgot to mention, it was not only memorizing something, it was also reciting it--memorize (learn) and say it back, to a teacher, or a class... and that part of it included enunciating, speaking clearly, and with proper expression, you were not supposed to just "drone on"....
...He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me...
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These days, I consider memorization and just--memories and knowledge--in the context of our digitized age of modern technology: sometimes I think of something and then, stop myself from the feeling of wanting to "Google" it and just see what I know--or what I think I might know, or remember on my own, and then Google it to see if I was right, or how close I was.
Recently I was trying to see if I could remember, without checking Google or my own blog, the five crime families of La Cosa Nostra in New York City,
Bonanno
Colombo
Gambino
Lucchese
Genovese
and also the six published novels written by Jane Austen:
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park.
I remembered the Mafia families on my own, but could only recall five of the Austen novels--checked with Google, and found that the one I couldn't come up with was Mansfield Park.
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[excerpt from Woody Allen's autobiography]
--------------- And so, I was closing in on the final term in Midwood High getting bad grades and not helped by the romantic notion that a life of crime might be the most fun of all my options.
Then one fateful afternoon, after a particularly good volley of gags directed at the screen during a movie, someone said, "You should write some of your gags down. They're funny."
A casual remark, but through the noise of the Flatbush streets, I heard it. I had the stolen typewriter Dad had fenced, and so I went home and sat down at it. I made up a few jokes and banged them out on the Underwood.
On a roll, luck always being my portion, my mother, a serious woman with a heart of liquid nitrogen, paused in her daily ritual of slapping my face on spec and said surprisingly, "Why don't you show your wise cracks to Phil Wasserman [not the other Phil Wasserman--the original, the press agent] and get his opinion? He runs always with those Broadway wags."
I followed her advice.
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{Apropos of Nothing, by Woody Allen. 2020. Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018}
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