Memorization isn't hot with the cool kids.
It never has been -- it's been the bogeyman of education reform movements pretty much since education reform movements existed. Now, it gets the added boost of, "Oh, if you don't know that stuff, you can always look it up on the internet! So who needs it? You should be free and only learn facts that matter to your constructed education and appeal to your interests!"
(Dear readers from other countries: Welcome to why we don't know where you live, what your capital city is, what language you speak, or what your major exports are. And let's not even start on the foreign language issue.)
The problem with this is that, while you do learn based on what you're interested in, you also develop interests based on what you've learned, and quite a lot of that stems from random facts that may be rolling around in your memory -- facts that get there because you, well... memorize them. By not learning facts (even if you're not immediately fascinated), you're severely limiting your horizons.
Is it ever going to matter to me that the capital of Andorra is Andorra la Vella? Well, it might show up on a Sporcle quiz, but probably not. (If it does, though, I am prepared, man. ;p) But that fact starts to get a lot of other things glommed onto it. Andorra has two princes (though it's a constitutional republic). Do I have a great deal of interest? Not at the moment, but because that's in my head, it's in what Tolkien called "the Soup pot" -- I have it at my disposal. I am curious about the arrangement, how it works within a power struggle, how it's historically operated. Maybe not wildly curious, but a little curious. And maybe someday it will combine with some other oddball fact kicking around in my skull (the crown prince of Japan is the first crown prince not to go to the traditional royal family school in Tokyo?), and those two things will make something new in my head. Who knows? The point is, they will never have a random collision if I don't know them.
Another point, of course, is that it's embarrassing not have the slightest idea where your new neighbor comes from after he tells you, and have to run off to Wikipedia to do a quick check. And it's flatly dangerous to not have a basic understanding of biology or chemistry. Math... oh, math. The ancestral home of memorization, so traumatizing to the reformers. But really, if you don't know the formula for area of a circle, and you need to, say, find a tablecloth... you're not going to be able to work it on your calculator, because you don't know what numbers you're pulling in. And grammar... sigh. Just, sigh. Who really needs to know how to make communication clear and readable, anyway, right?
(Note: Knowing grammar does not mean never letting your hair down. You don't have to speak like a textbook, or write like one, to know how the parts of speech work, or where to put an apostrophe.)
Then, there's the question of fun.
There's a lot of hyperventilating about how learning should be fun, and not be about memorization... but have you ever heard a kid rattle off his favorite memorized facts about dinosaurs? Or a fantasy footballer go on about his team's stats? Heck, I think geography is useful, but to be honest, I did learn to name 197 countries in fourteen minutes for a Sporcle quiz, and I'm now in the process of learning their capitals because it's fun to know this stuff. Not everything that goes into your head has to become the subject of a soul-searching personal essay about spiritual and creative growth. Sometimes, it's just cool to know that when Krakatau blew, they heard it in Perth (much cooler when you know where Krakatau and Perth are). This is as true for little kids as it is for adults. I do geography in preschool storytime, and that particular fact is amazing to them -- it's like something blowing up here and being heard in Chicago. And, by the way, it's okay to introduce geography the same way you introduce math. You learn that 2+2=4 before you get to non-Euclidean geometry. It's okay to also learn that there are horses in Mongolia before you start debating the historical legacy of Genghis Khan.
Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a real downside to the ability to memorize facts. I've never understood the rush to denigrate it.
