A student was once heard grumbling to his friends, “Much of what we learn we forget. The more we learn, the more we forget. The more we forget, the less we know. So why bother to learn?”
When some students fail or do badly in their examinations, they give the excuses: “I just cannot remember.” “I am not the memorizing type!”
“What I learnt just did not come out in the examination!”
In our daily lives, memory is essential. We need to recognize places and people, to remember dates and time of appointments, to recall names, to remember roads and routes, to identify things and to do so many other tasks. It certainly is an asset and advantage to have a good or strong memory. Imagine the doctor cannot remember most o his patient, who has difficulty recognizing symptoms and remembering the names and effects of drugs. He will soon lose his patients. Likewise, the lawyer, teacher, engineer, in fact, a person in any profession, needs to remember a certain amount of knowledge and information.
Students cannot escape from having to memorize a certain amount of data or information in any subject. No doubt, examination now tend to emphasize more and more on questions that are not merely based on simple recall or memory work. They demand thinking, understanding, analysis and synthesis. However, a certain degree of memory cannot be avoided.
In Mathematics, the students still need to remember certain formulae and methods to about solving the problems. In Language, remembering the meanings of vocabulary is important. Even in Computer Science, one still has to remember how to go about using a particular programme.