Is this an American thing? We did absolutely not have to memorize any of that thing. We had to understand the structure, why the rows and columns etc. But memorizing it serves no purpose.
With every class including tests and exams we were allowed to use a reference book. This book was pretty thick and contained a whole lot of info including the periodic table and all the info about elements you could ever need.
I think my education (keep in mind this was 25 years ago) was focused more on the why and less on the what. If you understand why something is the way it is, the reason behind it and how to use it, you know a lot more than just being a flesh book that can list a bunch of facts.
It’s easier to verify rote memorization than actual understanding so naturally shitty schools focus on the former at the expense of the latter. Most American schools are shitty by academic standards.
You’re not kidding. Public school in the city.
There were so many dumb things I had to memorize. Periodic table. Solar system moon and planets. Multiplication table.
Even worse is the people who see memory as intelligence because of that BS. I remember working at a office and the boss made Steve, the guy who knew 15 digits of Pi, his right hand man. Steve is currently still working there. Congrats Steve your superior memory apparently can’t get you out of your deadend job.
If you haven’t already, you should watch Mystery Team specifically for the character of Duncan “Boy Genius” who absolutely fits this characterization to a T.
While it is true that rote memorization is a terrible thing for schools to focus on, I find it interesting that the discussion immediately jumped to “America bad” with a presumption it was a unique American practice. The many comments from around the world show it seems to be a more widespread practice.
It’s American Exceptionalism at work. Unlike the rest of the world, we have no healthcare, we use Fahrenheit, and we put on our pants one leg at a time.
Czech here, also had to memorize it. But our school system here is 90% just memorizing shit, it’s a fucking joke.
My teacher, in germany, used memorising it as a punishment. Like four dudes in my class had to do it.
In Lithuania we literally have the whole periodic table on the wall in every chemistry class I have ever been to.
Same in Hungary
And we have a book that you can use at every chemistry, biology, math and physics exam with a lot a formulas, glyph explenations, periodic table, material properties etc…
My school was barely 15 years ago, but we also had a thin book handed out to us in 7th grade or so that contained charts and references for pretty much everything in a very condensed form. Periodic tables, formulas for math and physics, chemical and physical attributes for a bunch of materials, … And the entire ASCII table for some reason.
That was in Germany during the 00s and I still have that book, and three or four copies I stole over time.
and three or four copies I stole over time.
Gut gemacht, Leiser
Memorizing the periodic table is probably the high-school assignment I’m most angry about to this day.
You didn’t have to memorize the Canterbury Tales?
I’d find that less-useless. You can’t reference the Summoner’s tale in 1 second.
I had to look up what the summoner’s tale was. I can say this from memory.
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke."
In America, we didn’t have to truley memorize it. For tests we had a reference packet that included the table.
That being said we did have to memorize a few major ones.
Its also important to recognize education is a state by state thing, not federal. The curriculum in Texas can be different than the one in Florida. Even teacher to teacher, I could see one class having to memorize it while the one next door doesn’t.
Are you talking about Binas? All the homies love Binas.
American here - we didn’t have to memorize it. All we had to do was know the groupings (Noble gas, metalloids, etc)
It might be, I didn’t take chemistry in high school but those I know who did spent weeks memorizing it.
We were expected to memorize it, yes, along with the properties of each column and generally what went where.
But that was like the first part of chem, and after that test we had the table up on the front wall.
You were lucky. Many education systems around the world still use memorization instead of comprehension as a measurement of learning.
Binas in the Netherlands
I had to memorize it in university. And I didn’t even study chemistry, but “engineering science”. As a matter of fact: I actually always disliked chemistry.
I agree with you. Though some people out there do really love being flesh books.
It’s a thing with some teachers in some places. The quality of education in the US is hugely variable, because standards and curriculum are largely left up to local school systems with widely different funding and priorities.
If teacher is shitty, he will force students to memorise it, as mine.
Brazil here, we had to, me and my friends even made some vulgar funny songs (to teenagers at least) to help memorize it, I had a pretty bad chem teacher.
We had the periodic table in huge letters on the wall of our chemistry classroom. Wouldbe difficult to not allow students to use it during tests.
One of my nursing school teachers used to say “You don’t have to know everything, you just have to know where to look it up.” I always thought that’s very good and practical advice.
But before you can look it up, and I’m all for it, you need to know something is possible. That’s what education does for you.
Thats the “you have to know where to look” part.
I was a chemistry major in college. The tests all came with a periodic table for reference. Didn’t have to memorize a thing. We were even allowed to use calculators! High school was full of lies.
I have nothing against calculators. But I have taught some elementary and jr high school math classes in my old a feeble age. The “why can’t we use calculators” and " what do I need to know this for" was a constant whinge I had to listen to and deal with.
Why I want you to know how to solve a quadratic equation isn’t because that’s what you are going to do for the rest of your life. But rather, I want you to see something like that in the far future and go “Oh, I know what this and that it isn’t gibberish. And I can whip out that smart phone I got and google it to find the howto steps to solve it.” And I want you to acquire the discipline to learn things. Besides, just knowing what 7x3 is, makes everything else so much easier to learn in math. That removes fear and stress point and builds the confidence to tackle more complex ideas.
I probably own more calculators than most here. So, I’m all for them. And I did always allow any student to use a calculator in class. I would just hand you a slide rule…(and yes, I’m that old to have used them in class as a kid and I still own a couple). But, when I was teaching, I really wanted my students get their fingers dirty with the numbers themselves and to learn how those numbers work. While getting the correct answer is very important, as a teacher, I was perhaps less concerned with the correct answer and more concerned with HOW you got that answer. Because if you know what you did to get that answer, you are far more likely to get the right answer than the wrong answer.
In the end, I think education needs to be approached from the idea of making learning more fun. No matter the subject. Sadly, that’s a very difficult trick for any teacher in the typical class room to accomplish.
I think education needs to be approached from the idea of making learning more fun. No matter the subject.
I agree.
On the topic, I suggest reading “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath to anybody that wants to understand how to convey information (to students, clients, etc.) in a way that can be remembered.
School is supposed to prepare you for solving chemical problems in a tent in the woods with nothing but paper and pencil and meager rations.
Involving civilization, literature and tools is entirely unsuited for the end goal.
Chemistry fans: And obscurium is really cool, because it has three stable isotopes right near each other, but it’s not really useful for anything…
Chemists: why are my results so weird? Oh, right - hydrogen can have a neutron sometimes.
I have nothing against calculators. But I have taught some elementary and jr high school math classes in my old a feeble age. The “why can’t we use calculators” and " what do I need to know this for" was a constant whinge I had to listen to and deal with.
Why I want you to know how to solve a quadratic equation isn’t because that’s what you are going to do for the rest of your life. But rather, I want you to see something like that in the far future and go “Oh, I know what this and that it isn’t gibberish. And I can whip out that smart phone I got and google it to find the howto steps to solve it.” And I want you to acquire the discipline to learn things. Besides, just knowing what 7x3 is, makes everything else so much easier to learn in math. That removes fear and stress point and builds the confidence to tackle more complex ideas.
I probably own more calculators than most here. So, I’m all for them. And I did always allow any student to use a calculator in class. I would just hand you a slide rule…(and yes, I’m that old to have used them in class as a kid and I still own a couple). But, when I was teaching, I really wanted my students get their fingers dirty with the numbers themselves and to learn how those numbers work. While getting the correct answer is very important, as a teacher, I was perhaps less concerned with the correct answer and more concerned with HOW you got that answer. Because if you know what you did to get that answer, you are far more likely to get the right answer than the wrong answer.
In the end, I think education needs to be approached from the idea of making learning more fun. No matter the subject. Sadly, that’s a very difficult trick for any teacher in the typical class room to accomplish.
We had to memorize that entire fucking thing in highschool…
Most chem PhDs don’t even know the whole thing lol. We had to memorize just the symbols in high school, but positions weren’t required. In my grad-level inorg course, the first test was a blank table that we had to fill in, but even then the f-block and transactinides were not required.
It worked so well I managed to retain that knowledge for almost a full week after we were tested on it lol it’s all gone now
Teachers in the 90s: you won’t always have a calculator.
Me now: you were saying Ms. Knowitall?
But, consider you’re stranded in the wild. All technology lost due to an accident. It’s just you, nature and your skills. How will you know then for how many days the melons you’ve foraged will suffice if you’ve found N of them and eat one a day? /j
I eat all the melons immediately
That was a short answer that turned out to be mostly wrong. The longer answer is “if you don’t understand how this works, you won’t have the intuition to notice when you get absurd results from the calculator”. If you don’t have that intuition, then when you inevitably make a small usage mistake on a calculator (or in matlab or wolfram alpha or whatever), you’ll end up not realizing that you got a clearly wrong answer.
I’m so glad Swedish schools have mostly ditched memorization (maybe too much sometimes though)
My chemistry teacher tried to teach us a “song” to remember it.
“Hehee libeb canofnee something something piscalar”
Which is stupid, because it was just reading the first few rows of it, but annoying that was 30 years ago and I still fucking remember it. I can’t even remember what I did yesterday. Fucking head full of nonsense.
Most of the things that are taught in school are a “remember this forever even if it’s completely useless”
Just sing the Tom Lehrer Elements song
Lazy teaching
