While the concepts of rote learning and drill-and-kill instruction have acquired negative reputations, Justin Snider, a doctoral student at Columbia University, seeks to remind educators that memorization—in the sense of “learning things by heart"—can be highly enriching for students. Memorization, he writes, is challenging, exercises the brain, and can give rise to new insights on material.
The problem, he allows, is that it has also become too closely associated with multiple-choice tests.