Remembering vs. Learning

There are some things which must simply be remembered. I remember (what a give-away) being forced to learn the multiplication tables by rote in Third Grade. It wasn't much fun, largely because committing numbers to memory doesn't lend itself to hooks. I was too young at the time to have an earnest debate about the merits of rote learning versus synthetic learning (synthetic, of course, meaning that one synthesizes the knowledge into meaningful memes, or some such garbage, which should not be corrected because I don't care for academese), but had I been, I would have argued (unsuccessfully, I might add) that rote learning was wrong and bad and useless.

I would have been unsuccessful because no one really listens to small children when they complain about the qualities of their education. Ah well. But for whatever reason, my argument would have been wrong because some things must simply be learned by rote. If you must memorize something, you must just memorize it. It's no good going through your schooling having to look up the multiplication tables every day, and eventually you would remember them anyway. A brief and semi-painless interval of rote saves time later on.

Rote learning works best when the thing to be remembered is used frequently and is fairly simple. If you stop using something you've learned by rote, chances are good you'll forget it. So multiplication is a good thing to memorize, as are lines for a play. The one will (hopefully) be kept in use throughout your life, while the other needs to be remembered for a short period but then forgotten. Obviously, not all things we should remember fall into these categories.

The reason I'm talking about this is the prevalence of bumper stickers and signs saying, "Never Forget," or "Always Remember." Many people would like to believe that history is a simple thing which should simply be learned by rote and then activated at the appropriate times. Convention of NYC Firefighters? Remember September 11, 2001. Elderly Jews? Remember the Holocaust. Black people? Remember slavery, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and/or the Civil Rights Movement. George Bush? Remember the war dead. If you can invoke the appropriate rote memorization, you'll be fine, or so sayeth the bumper stickers.

The problem with remembering is that it's not helpful. I'm pretty sure there are unrepentant murderers who remember (with great fondness, undoubtedly) their crimes. Sure, memories can bring up guilt, and forgetting important things is completely unhelpful, but the cult of memory to which we as a society seem to belong is fallacious. History is not a series of discrete memories. It isn't simple. Memorizing dates and events by rote doesn't teach us anything.

It would be far better perhaps for bumper stickers to say, "9/11: Learn From It." Learn what, you might ask? Well, this is why no one actually says this slogan, because a little learning is a dangerous thing, and learning is much more open than memorization. The lesson someone might learn from September 11 might be a lesson in better terror tactics, or that the security of the United States is actually remarkably frail in a lot of ways. The lessons of the Holocaust might inspire a generation of anti-Semites to perfect the murders of the past. History's lessons are myriad, and many of them are not things we feel people should learn.

In the end, remembering and learning are not enough. We must have teachers. I don't necessarily mean school teachers, I mean guides. Our choice of guide is the most important choice we can make. So remember, learn, and seek to guide and be guided.