I have a crappy memory. I tried med school for a year. In all my pre-med and medical courses, they constantly warned us to understand, not memorize. I gladly took their advice, tried to understand rather than rote-memorize, and I ended up flunking 5 exams, which finished my medical career.
The fact is, in many fields of human endeavor, you need to memorize before you can think. Would we have better physicians if they weren't required to memorize and spit out so much rote information? Not sure about that. I think a good doc not only has great personal and intuitive skills, he or she needs good analytical skills and a "think outside the box" problem solving mentality similar to that of a really good computer programmer (which I thought I had, hence crossing over into medicine from computers).
But, a doc also needs to remember stuff. There's so much data and you need to remember signs and symptoms, case histories, and see the similarities and differences with previous cases you've had.
The OP was about math, and I'm definitely in the memorize-the-formula camp; I've never really grasped the theoretical niceties of mathematics and am more of a connect-the-dots kind of guy. But definitely there are similarities between learning math and learning the physical and biological sciences. Some of it is intuitive, but some of it is just wacky stuff out of left field and you have to just take it on faith.
I think we need to emphasize critical thinking and analysis more, but we also need to teach the ancient Greek and Roman methods of memorizing, e.g. the memory palace method -- see Moonwalking with Einstein for more details.
The fact is, in many fields of human endeavor, you need to memorize before you can think. Would we have better physicians if they weren't required to memorize and spit out so much rote information? Not sure about that. I think a good doc not only has great personal and intuitive skills, he or she needs good analytical skills and a "think outside the box" problem solving mentality similar to that of a really good computer programmer (which I thought I had, hence crossing over into medicine from computers).
But, a doc also needs to remember stuff. There's so much data and you need to remember signs and symptoms, case histories, and see the similarities and differences with previous cases you've had.
The OP was about math, and I'm definitely in the memorize-the-formula camp; I've never really grasped the theoretical niceties of mathematics and am more of a connect-the-dots kind of guy. But definitely there are similarities between learning math and learning the physical and biological sciences. Some of it is intuitive, but some of it is just wacky stuff out of left field and you have to just take it on faith.
I think we need to emphasize critical thinking and analysis more, but we also need to teach the ancient Greek and Roman methods of memorizing, e.g. the memory palace method -- see Moonwalking with Einstein for more details.