“In Defense of Memorization”

Mark Bauerlein, in his article on Poetry Out Loud, has a link to an article by Michael Knox Beran, “In Defense of Memorization,” City Journal (Summer 2004), a conservative quarterly.

In the process of giving the reader a broad overview of the antiquity of memorization and its importance for historical figures like Augustine and Shakespeare, Beran makes some grandiose claims about the benefits of memorizing great literary and historical texts, and defends memorization against attacks by “progressive” educators, whose position he sums up in this wise:

Kids, in other words, should be free to do as they please; the teacher, in the role of “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage,” should cater to their whims; anything else is galley slavery. For progressive educators, to require students to recite “Daffodils” or memorize the Gettysburg Address is a relic of a “drill and kill” culture that inhibits the development of the self and is the educational equivalent of a chain gang.

In response to these educators, Beran argues that memorization, rather than being enslaving, is, on the contrary, liberating:

But the progressives’ educational philosophy is only superficially a philosophy of liberty. The progressive exercises in “guided fantasy” and “sensitivity training” that have replaced memorization and recitation do little to free kids’ selves. The older techniques, by contrast, are genuinely liberating. They build up in the child a more powerful mental instrument, one that will allow him, in later life, to make good use of his freedom. They cultivate those critical powers that enable an educated adult to question authority intelligently. The older techniques also unlock doors in the interior world of the soul. Classic poetry and rhetoric give kids a language, at once subtle and copious, in which to articulate their own thoughts, perceptions, and inchoate feelings. They help awaken what was previously dormant, actualize what was before only potential, and so enable the young person to fulfill the injunction of Pindar: “Become what you are.”

I think Beran’s view of the merits of memorization is as dogmatic as his depiction of views on memorization held by “progressive” educators. Memorization as a good in and of itself is as simplistic a belief as the belief that memorization per se is pernicious. Memorization combined with recitation is a way of both absorbing the content and interpreting the meaning of a text, by having to determine how it is to be read in order to render its meanings, an act with is both analytical and creative. Memorization alone will not develop critical faculties, just as creative faculties cannot develop in a void, apart from the texts that comprise our cultures and our pasts.