They do have a point. School should be about learning and developing critical thinking skills rather than memorizing who the 30th president was.

I know my schooling had a ton of memorization. Funny to think about now that I know I have Aphantasia because I always excelled in math and science because they are less about memorization and more about learning a concept to apply.

They need to teach kids how to use AI. It’s like people that won’t let you use a calculator in math. “You aren’t always going to have a calculator in your pocket”

I’ve always been a big supporter of open book/note tests

There is no reason I should be able to recite as much of the Canterbury Tales as I can.

Facts are how you build up everything else. It pretty hard to reason about complex math if you don’t understand how to count to 100. It’s pretty hard to reason about how societies move in waves and cycles if you don’t memorize something about history.

I think people don’t understand that you don’t just start doing abstract work. You build it a bunch of facts that you memorize and then you can start building higher level things like patterns and abstractions.

I know this from trying to teach my child basic concepts like what money is. What exactly is a day. How magnet work. The entire concept of estimation. These are trivial to adults, but these are hard won concepts that were build from concrete ideas for my child.

We know this is necessary because of cultures that are missing whole concepts like particular colors. The idea of right and left. So on.