Jeff Jacoby extols the memorization of facts (“The blessing of ‘rote’ memory,” Opinion, April 20). As he notes, rote memorization is often disparaged as a low form of intellectual activity.
I spent a number of years as a graduate student, and then a researcher, in the pigeon laboratory at Harvard University, the lab started by the late B.F. Skinner.
I would argue that all successful researchers have a thorough grasp of what has gone before in their field. This rote knowledge of facts then provides a basis for designing new experiments that address unanswered questions. Discussions among researchers often involve statements like “But remember that Smith’s 1980 experiment showed the opposite result.” To an outsider, such shorthand as “Smith 1980″ would be completely opaque.
Memorization, as Jacoby puts it, stocks one’s mind with “a range of language to think and speak in.”
William Vaughan Jr.
Chebeague Island, Maine