And what the hell is a “roy-g-biv” anyhow? Coming up with a nonsense word as a mnemonic is weak.

great to learn geography

I had to memorize the countries of the world for a test. The lunch break before the test, we made up “Very Carefully Ed Put Caustic Acid Up Pete’s Big Bum” for South America, “My Mother Maliciously Said, Gee SL-ICk, Go To Bed” for the western coast of Africa, as two examples.

It’s absolutely *necessary* that children know a lot of facts before they continue on the path towards better understanding. In the classical education model, it’s termed the “trivium” (Latin for “3 ways”) of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. The earliest stage (grammar) is most of this memorization and fact gathering takes place; from there, children learn to think creatively (Logic), and then express themselevs (Rhetoric). You need all three (!) to be well-educated, so yes, memorization is an important component. It only gets a bad rap from mush-headed “educators” (never trust a teacher who is too big for their britches to call himself a teacher) with advanced degrees in “Education” rather than core knowledge subjects, like language, history, science, or math. These dolts don’t know a whole lot about anything themselves, so this disparage memorization because they don’t like students more knowledgable than themselves. Your tax dollars at work in the world of government schools.

And whatever happened to East Xylophone? Shouldn’t they get equal billing?

In fact, I can *still* sing all of the US states in alphabetical order! (a song I learned in 4th grade, i am now 27!) I can then take the map and label all the states and their capitals….

Nevertheless, it is a basic and important component of learning, especially for young children who have yet to develop analytical skills.

Also, rote memorization is of value. Knowing the order of the presidents is essentially useless, just as knowing the “Alphabet of Nations” is, in a practical sense, useless. That is not the point. What is of value is establishing the neural pathways that facilitate the development of more complex memory functions. More importantly it is fun.

My kids love to sing this song, it is one of our favorite car ride chanties. I don’t think TMBG were setting out to get five year olds onto Jeopardy. Its a cd about the Alphabet for cripes sake. They were just engaging in fun little mind game and rhyming some really nutty words. The follow up to singing this song for us is, “Ok everbody now its time for the Alphabet of Foods or the Alphabet of Farm Animals.” Not trying to make geniuses just trying to get to grandma’s house.

can i imbed on here? lets try…

Today they only can thell the order. In fifteen years, they can tell who they are and the order.

The memory is not the only, but is very necesary and helpful to learn

About the post:

The best Country song is the animaniac´s

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IDtdQ8bTvRc

And they call at Sahara “Spanish Sahara”, the real name.

Or similarly, the beloved Suzuki Method for learning music. As a musician, I hate that, because all it teaches children is to mimic what they hear. They don’t have a real, fundamental understanding of the structure of music.

It’s a neat trick on a superficial surface level, but it is meaningless when you dig deeper.