I was not good at school because I had false ideas about education. Basically, the idea that learning has nothing to do with emotions or spirituality. It was classrooms with boring white walls and tons of memorization techniques. I spent countless dreary hours learning memorization and beating myself up for it not working. In my late teens (I'm actually still in my late teens), I realized that everything I love learning about I put my whole mind and body into it. Learning is not purely bland memorization. It is an experience that involves all of your emotions, imagination, and personal experiences.
Yeah, I remember an Alan Watts lecture regarding self-improvement and learning and I think in a roundabout way he said the same thing. The only reason why you should seek to learn more about things in general is because it opens up pathways for your own expression and because it allows you to do things you otherwise weren't able to do before. To use his example, you learn French not because you want to earn a degree in French but because you want to learn to enjoy France and to be able to party it up with French people. I got into chainmail because I love the idea of creating jewelry to express myself and create stuff for other people, plus chainmail is incredibly re-workable as opposed to something like knitting or paintings.
You are absolutely right, and I think this is why people get stuck at math. It is hard to understand at what point in your life you are going to use this. I am pretty sure there are countless of great ideas to implement it though, you just need to show how math will help you with real life problems and what you can create with it. This would be: - doing programming (yay video games) - debunking some fake/misleading news - compute the amount you will owe when you get into your massive debt - explaining the basics of the math used in probabilities and some fields of physics so students understand it is a building block towards more concrete fields etc
I get what you're saying. You don't want to be the type of person who memorizes a bunch of facts & figures for the test and then forgets them as soon as the test is over. But I'm not sure the problem is memorization, in and of itself. It's more how you're utilizing memorization and what your goals are. But you do need to remember facts/content in order to have something to work with.
I have noticed I can't directly recall from memory all the books I've read and the information, however when the topic comes up and my brain connects it then I am able to talk about them with a feeling that my "intuition" is guiding it. I think as we experience books we build our arsenal in the back of our mind, and this shows in our actions when we are faced with situations.
Paradise lost is one of the books that completely changed my paradigm because the words gave me perspective in life at a time when I needed it the most
Thank you SO much for this video. I love reading a lot but when I see that I don’t measure up to the standards of remembering whole phrases of each book, I feel dumb. I shouldn’t be waiting for another person to tell me that but when you’re so full of anxiety and low self esteem, having a person tell you that is liberating.
You comprehend my fears and anxieties perfectly! I find myself sometimes having to reread a single page dozens of times over, for over an hour or more, just to be sure it's finally stuck; only to wake up the next morning to realise that I'll have to do it all over again.
I think memorization and understanding are both valuable. When we memorize, it becomes part of you, and will ripen and bear fruit the older we get and the deeper our understanding grows by living and through experience.
Insightful as ever. As a History Major, I find your videos to be quite useful for navigating and understanding this new world I'm entering. On the topic of enrichment through the humanities Polybius, a Greek writer, spoke about the necessity of gaining experience and practical knowledge to understand history. From my understanding, he says that: "Thinking you can understand the big picture of world events by reading partial histories is like believing that you can appreciate the energy and beauty of a living body by studying the dissected parts of its corpse." I think this ties in well to the point of your video. A historian, or anyone in the humanities, can't just study their field. They need to enrich themselves with periphery topics to truly gain understanding of their topic. Anyway, lovely video, can't wait for your next upload.
I love it how you have paradigm shifts in the plural as if that’s normal. I have had many in my life but always had the feeling from others in my life that this was weird in someway.. thanks for this encouraging message!
Omg yes! I’ve noticed that too. Many people stay the same. They treat people the same way they always did, they deal with problems the same way they always did. And it always stroke me and thought that maybe I’m doing something wrong here.
This is exactly the video I needed right now. I just enrolled on a path of study that requires memorising large numbers of quotations from books and plays for the assessment. I am determined to succeed at it for many reasons, but also determined not to ruin my relationship to literature or reinforce my existing insecurities (dyslexia-related). Thank you for this. I know I will return to it a few times before the year is through.
I suppose along with philosophy, poetry, literature and such subjects, religion should also be added. taking interests in religions, their holy books and moral values found inside of those books and community can open up various perspectives as well. I'm a Muslim and along with learning about my religion I also get inspired from Buddhism as well. Thank you, Robin, for taking me through another perspective by your commentary, I hope that mine helps someone too.
In fact during the Renaissance Theology was more important for scholars than natural philosophy and mathematics. You have a good point here. Thank you for this comment.
I want to tell you something that you should not get inspired by buddhism that there is a chance of "shirk" i hope your are very strong at your iman. And please see The great Person lived on this earth Muhammad rasool Allah pbuh as a great philosopher of All time and his teachings, i hope u understood what i am trying to say and you will think on this.
@@TheLegendBoy295 Of course brother, "inspired" is the term i use when i haven't explored the topic thoroughly, i only know that siddharta gautama buddha is a very respectable man and came up with great outlooks on life, I remember his quotes but not much than i remember ahadith of the prophet (peace be upon him), as long as my primary focus is on the Quran, hadith and the sunnah and seerat un nabi, I am free to be inspired from whichever source i deem interesting.
@@TheLegendBoy295 I'm glad you were concerned because most people do tend to get caught up too much in side-interests while they may not know it, thank you for your advise!
@@yusrafatima2594 MashaAllah watbarakAllah sister, Your very intelligent girl, i am very glad for your positive understanding May Allah guide All of us Btw, You can read every religion book(because its not forbidden for knowledge and knowing that every religion have mistakes and issue except islam) after reading Quran and hadith very deeply and Philosophically.
You have touched such an essential topic. During the teens, one goes about questioning different perspectives and developing a world view of their own. But often times, the latter doesnt happen because they have memorized someone's perspective and pretend as if its their own. The idea of memorization is so deeply rooted in education, that it has become second to nature.
I should say that this is the most original and useful video on your channel. How you related a concept from cybernetics to philosophy is very intelligent. Hope to see more of these videos.
This video is surprisingly what i needed for a paper about how the philosophy of John Dewey influenced the American education system by doing away with the system what Dewey thought was “elitist and undemocratic”. The little part you added about the creation of the classical education system in Florence has sent me down a rabbit hole which will very much benefit my research. Thank you so much!!!
I concur - there are times where memorization is necessary. Physiotherapy was my first degree and anatomy and physiology and neuroscience was very much about regurgitation. I think the problem is the amount we needed to know surpassed our ability to understand and apply it to our discipline and should have been taught at a different pace or through different means such as case studies. Do I remember all the cranial nerves? No but that doesn’t affect my ability to solve clinical problems in my everyday life at this level.
Such an important aspect when reading, or any form of learning in general. Being a parrot of knowledge doesn't make you smart, it means you have one base level of taking in information. Understanding and integration is the goal for one's life, to better you and those around you
Thanks for your very insightful videos. I am a master's student in world literature and people (my family, mostly) keep asking what I will do with this degree. I tell them I am not in grad school to be specifically trained for a certain vocation, but to have my critical thinking sharpened and my worldview challenged. I agree with you that the humanities make us better humans.
Thanks to you I have 3 Journaling Agendas for my day to day studies, normally have for each theme a block, anyways, you lead me to Honobichi agendas, then got it to my 3 children. The notes keep non stop, it just takes a moment to stop and tell you how grateful I'm that I see you, again. 🌞
Reading is fantastic, because it strips down a lot of the frills and flourish that videos and social media posess, which lets you digest the raw information, but it doesn't mean that the author isn't wrong or lying. Which means if you ever want to truly get knowledgeable about anything, you have to go out in the real world to experience it and get empirical evidence!
I think the advent of written language fundamentally changed the place of memorization in human affairs. In pre-literate societies, memorization carried sacred and mystical connotations: to be the Keeper of the Lore was to be entrusted with your people's history, mythology, sacred mysteries. The body of knowledge could be voluminous, and take years to acquire. (I dimly recall this playing a part in the climax of 'Farenheit 451?' Memorization in our time is a way to show off, but under very different circumstances, where knowledge itself is imperiled, it becomes a sacred calling.) I wish I could recall the source, but I seem to recall a study that examined the brains of tribal peoples who were keepers of epic poems; their brains were uniquely wired to recall long passages for recitation on holy days and festivals, and the activity of speaking the lore (often in verse) induced a kind of rhythmic trance.
You may like the work of David Abram, he writes on the differences in epistemology between oral and written language in his book, The Song of the Sensuous.
Always such great content. This video speaks directly to the conversation we need to have with regard to education and what it means to learn, grow knowledge, and ultimately understand.
This video is actually very deep and perspective-changing. Recently i'm doing paper on muhammad Abduh critics for memorization in islamic education, but i'm having difficulties in making it relevant with our own situation. So thankyou for the insight and hope to see more of this in the future.
I just found your videos and I've loved them so far. I commented on one of your shorts that requisite variety brought the work of Ashby to mind and lo and behold you mention cybernetics in this one! Love your work!
This is one of your best videos Robin. I read for the same reason: explanding one's horizon of knowledge and perspective. One of the major paradigm shifts occurred for me when I discovered (or rediscovered) Derrida and then Foucault. Thanks for your great work.
Man you literally blow my mind!!! Thank you. I had been in a vicius circle of anxiety and sadness for almost a year, searching these terrible ideals of which you speak. Now i going to apply my understanding of your video in my regular life. Again, thank you, your work is amazing. I'll wait your future videos about this topic. °3°♡
Thanks a lot! When I first came across your videos, I was transitioning from an engineering focus to the humanities and the arts. Its nice to know that you've done the same; and your always one step ahead of me in that transformation😅 The videos are absolutely amazing! I'm not one to give advice where it isn't asks; but if you need an idea for a video, try one about "Historical fiction vs fiction that is historical" What I mean is: Is it better to watch a movie made in the 30s through 60s 'showcasing' that year. Or to watch new movies based upon that year. That's just something that's been going through my head; and for me, I like the first😂 Happy New Year! It looks like 2023 is off to a good start! (Auto correct has forced me to rewrite this; that's a topic on the side of long-hand😉)
I ironically can't recall who said it (I think it might have been VSauce), but I remember hearing a quote in a RU-vid video that went something along the lines of "I've read hundreds of books and I can't remember what most of them were about, but I like to think they each subconsciously impacted the way I think". Reading is more about building a toolbox to analyze the world rather than building a repertoire of facts I can regurgitate on commands. Thinking about my schooling, I always had near perfect marks in assignments where I could work through a problem, but struggled during exams when I couldn't remember a fact. To this day, I hate exams for that reason: in real life, you're rarely constrained by time or access to resources. In a similar example, I work as a statistician and have a graduate degree in statistics. Does it matter that I always have to look up the formula for the density function of the normal distribution because I can't seem to memorize it? No! What matters is that I understand when to use it and what the logic behind the formula is.
This is disappointing. People who like to think of themselves as educators often like to criticize the "education system" using verbs like "regurgitation", which is ironically an often regurgitated critique. What slips past most people with this myopic view that memorization is "useless" is that it's a false dichotomy. You're not to live only with the option to either memorize or understand. You CAN do both. You can't understand something without memorizing facts about the world, but forgetting higher-order facts that would allow you to invoke that understanding is also just as "useless" in the same vein that memorizing something in absence of (not instead of) understanding is "useless". If there's nothing to INVOKE from the RAM of your memory (for lack of better terms), then you can have all the understanding in the world, you're just not going to be able to use it.
Wow Thank you. this is exactly what I was looking for. I had to stop for a moment today because I was having a hard time remembering a scripture in the bible. I read it over and over again but I still had a hard time remembering it. But if you ask me what the scripture is all about, I can tell you exactly what it is all about. I remember the principle of it. I have taken the time to think about how it applies to my life. This is a great video. I learned a lot. Thank you.
Actually I want to share something like my thoughts. I think memorization is overlooked and used a lot in studying not just reading many students, and people who reads books they use methods and techniques and ways to memorize. Honestly, I think memorization is meant for short term memory unlike with long term memory. I think the most effective is understanding information than memorizing information or what you read. Memorizations has been used often than trying to understand information. The methods that use understanding over memorization tend to be more effective including Feynman technique, and teaching technique. There’s this quote I hear, “if you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t understand it enough. “ I don’t know the person who mentions this quote, but I kinda like it because many people and students don’t relying on understanding than memorization. I’m planning to use the Feynman technique because I don’t want to rely on memorization. Because it leads to short term memory. I think with understanding helps with remembering more what you study and read than memorize. So I think the Feynman technique and teaching technique works. What do you think?
I'm a middle-aged white-guy from-southern-California, with no kids neverbeenmarried, "The Most Irrelevant Person In The World" And- I love what you're doing here. And, wonderfully, you have been reminding me of great things I learned, with care AND difficulty, that I thought no one even cared about anymore, at least among those of the generation or range of birthyears, that you appear to be a part of (somewhere between 20 and 30, I think.) All love and peace to you my good man. Thanks and thanks again. Brian.
Hey Brian, don’t ever think of yourself as irrelevant, because in this age of social media and sensationalism, most heroes are ordinary people without honourable mentions. I’m glad my work spoke to you, and all the best. :)
In addition to what you've said, I think it's also for the very pleasure and fun of reading and satisfying one's curiosity. That's how I experience reading in humanities and literature, for when it comes to memory, I totally suck anyway 😂 Thanks a lot for the insights!
I fully agree with your perspective and point made here; Brave New World (as much as I hated it) helped me understand what's going on with the world today and where we are headed as a society, the novel 1984
un tema muy interesante, para mis clases solía intentar memorizar toda la materia necesaria para las pruebas para tener una buena nota a fin de semestre, al sistema educacional de mi país no le importa si aprendes algo con las clases, solo importa tener buenas calificaciones y lograr tener un puntaje lo suficientemente alto para entrar a una buena carrera universitaria e inconcientemente tambien hacía eso cuando leia cualquier tipo de literatura, ahora intento no enfocarme en memorizar todo el texto si no en entender sobre lo que está hablandome.
Facts are like beads. They are often individually varied in the beauty and utility. And you can collect them if you want. But in reality, it's only when they are strung together in patterns or frameworks that they make beautiful jewellery, counting abacuses, money, or rosaries. So not every application is essentially creative, but in areas where you can use your imagination, their uses place few limitations on your creativity and imagination. So memorization is essential, but not sufficient to be truly educated. Learning by rote is not enough. You need to be able to reason with what you have learned. To apply to the real world, and if you're really smart develop new understandings. To get to that point will take you a lifetime of applying what you have learnt.
If it comforts anyone, this was also one of the factors that made school hellish for neurodivergent people. Memorization for memorization's sake. It's dull, dreary, uninspired and leads to disdain towards learning, when a neurodivergent mind is actually fairly efficiently geared to learning actually. Just not the things the education system finds value in. Autistic special interests lead to them diving deep into specialized knowledge and study. The ADHD knack for jumping between hobbies and studies that interest them makes them more all-rounded people, having a larger requisite variety in multiple vastly unrelated fields. This accompanied with the system's determination to not give out proper accommodations makes academia especially ableist, which leads to less successful people in academia to be disabled, which means less likely for the upper rungs of the ladder to devise any change to the education system. Its so simple and elegant and yet so scary that it feels almost like a conspiracy.
This is what I am doing. In simple words one should not read a book for the sake of reading and should always have 'WHY' for reading a particular book.
I think memorization is a very efficient method for passing tests. But that's all it is, for those who use just for that. If you want to really get into things, you need to a) memorize (properly, not using rote learning, and instead using location based mnemonics) AND, as my little brother says, b) "Think with your own head." Memory is such a treasure. It absolutely is not useless. What is useless is using it to just get rid of a test. Honestly, never memorizing anything you study is just plain impossible even if you want to, because then what's the point of going through such an immense intellectual effort only to afterward not have it accessible? And the same goes for only memorizing and never engaging with the material, because then what's the point of having that material, that you don't really care about, stored inside you in the first place?
So its really confusing intelligence with Memorization, but by itself is nothing but useful. Its the application. Def has helped me retain a lot of information from book because then i can gather my thoughts, and put it all together.
For engineering at some point your professor will give you the equations for an exam, because the point of it all is not to memorize them but know which one to use for each problem
epic as always, but one thing is sure this whole idea of renaissance humanism will help an individual cope with the life troubles but changing the whole system so as to fit it to the ideas of the renaissance men is a very slow process. people like us who still live under tribal system with conservative societies find such ideas as mere utopias. I hope one day humanity will find the ultimate reality of oneness and will actually work towards it. peace
Memorization is not necessary but if you seriously break down a novel the author has created paragraphs and lines to help explain characters and deeper meaning. Example the first page second paragraph of The Great Gatsby explains Nick’s attitude and you immediately know this is a narrative. Also, you never know Nick’s age, he states simply - That was the year I met The Great Gatsby. Nick could be 80yrs old for all the reader can ascertain.
Memorization is not bad - it is bad when it is your only aim. Memorization has a rich history, and was used by Ancient Greeks, like the method of loci, to aid in rhetorics.
Great video again Robin, but I think there is something missing. I believe you might've overshadowed the usefulness of some of these memorisation techniques. I think there is an important point that you forgot to mention in the essay, that is, the difference between the types, or maybe aims, of memorisation. What I mean is, no doubt using a technique to memorise a passage from a book for the sake of regurgitating to feel some satisfaction or competence- is a lost endeavour, however, noting an idea so you can add it to other ideas to form a new understanding is very essential, and exactly the main tool for making insightful video essays such as this one. This is where I find some methods of memorisation to be useful, take Luhmann’s slip box for example (if you never heard of it, “How to take smart notes” is a book that explains it really well, and A RU-vidr named Elizabeth Filips made a good video as well). That aside, looking forward to your next video✌️😁
I completely agree. The point I was trying to make is that true value from knowledge doesn’t solely lie within memorization, and this combination of ideas you mentioned actually exists on a different plane. In psychology, memorization functions as “maintenance rehearsal” (maintaining recall) whereas combining perspectives is an act of elaborative rehearsal (permanently making the knowledge your own through combining it with previous understanding). While memorization can facilitate future elaborative rehearsals, it itself is not enough, and your observation is spot on. Thank you for the comment. :)
i appreciate and have been embracing this perspective, however, the majority of the videos that aim to help in optimizing memorization tend to most often be made by 'STEM' students. suggesting reasons 'why memorization is useless' to a medical student, or a student of the natural sciences, is simply not relevant. also, if you look at many of these videos, the creators frequently make the same point that you do, often explicitly advising to aim for understanding first and also to try to dynamically weave what you learn into your life.
This is going to sound silly but this is why I watch anime: to collect different perspectives on how to approach life, my goals, etc. But also for enjoyement, because I can't cite an anime in an essay 😂
Reading a hundred books every year and memorising those beautiful quotes won't get you anywhere, if you're not able to form your own opinion then I think it's useless to boast about how much you've read.
for all this talk of understanding rather than memorizing i still didn't understand how memorizing things hinders understanding ... like seriusly , name one thing you understand but that you don't remember , that is because "you remember everything you understand , but you don't understand everything you remember" wich is like saying "all crows are birds , but not all birds are crows" so a process of memorization preceeds critical analisis , else you end up with reading stuff and forgetting half of it before sundown also since you mentioned cybernetics and how diversity absorbs diversity , most of the tecniques about memorization force you to change the way you think about informations , for example here is a video in wich a metod is shown on how to memorize the first ten countries by population in the world ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xo-iIkDtD5A.html does this look like a standard way of thinking ? or does it rather look like a pretty well structured way to remember sequences of things ? wich is unusual yet effective to remember stuff ? for all the paradigme shifts the author claims to have had this down talk towards memorization sounds really shallow and rather uninspired ... sincerly a STEM student
🤝 fellow INTJ complaining about something I'm often complaining about (laughs). Our culture seems to generally like to cut things off into small chunks while blatantly ignoring the big picture, and learning is the same. The child learns very young to be cut off from their body, imagination, impulsions and inner life and is treated like a machine trained to regurgitate. And there's no way schools could encourage this knowledge being used in a bigger overarching model to help us make sense of the world and navigate it, nnnnooo
That first bit is poor reasoning. An instructor who does not push you to learn and demonstrate how to research, synthesize, and cite is not good. Such an instructor is, at best, lazy.
