Education reform should start in the classroom, with the relationship between teacher and pupil. In this vein, high school math teacher Ben Orlin’s recent Atlantic piece “When Memorization Gets in the ...

In my 29 years of teaching, I have often reflected on the balance between memorization and understanding. I recall one conversation where a math teacher shared the belief that “memorization no longer ...

The idea of rote memorization is bound to tick some people off, which makes for nice discussion and debate. In all the very legitimate conversation about critical thinking, problem-solving, analysis, ...

The recent article by Chronicle reporter Ericka Mellon about how schools are dropping weekly spelling tests in favor of teaching methods that focus less on memorization and more on understanding why ...

Ask a student to memorize a formula, and AI can do it faster. But ask them to apply it to a real-world problem, and that’s where the future of rigor lies. For decades, rigor in advanced coursework ...

Last post I introduced Concept Cards, a note-taking system that helps students store, retrieve, and use information more efficiently than traditional note-taking methods. Now, here are a few tips for ...

I suspect that I am in the same position as many others who teach at a university undergoing rapid enrollment increases. Most of my upper-level undergraduate courses have doubled in size since I began ...

Making kids memorize too much is the problem with U.S. schools, according to a new movie documentary, "Race to Nowhere." This movie, produced by a housewife and first-time film maker, is being ...

A time-honored mnemonic method used by memory athletes -- people adept at feats such as quickly memorizing the sequence of all the cards in a deck or a vast string of digits -- can be taught to people ...