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.
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.
In Spain we did have to memorize it. Truly idiotic. People just invented mnemonic phrases to get through the exam and that’s it. It served no educational purpose whatsoever.
Of the four levels of learning, rote memorization is the lowest, easiest to achieve, easiest to test, and least useful. The student can demonstrate the ability to repeat a memorized phrase verbatim, or given a couple seconds to think about it they can rephrase it in their own words using their mental thesaurus. Multiple choice and short answer questions test rote memorization, which happen to be easy to grade, machines can do it. Rote memorization will have little effect on the student’s overall behavior, if it’s all you teach and test for you’re not a teacher you’re just cosplaying as one.
My teacher, in germany, used memorising it as a punishment. Like four dudes in my class had to do it.
Our teacher offered extra credit to anyone who chose to memorize it. It was crazy too, I almost considered trying it since it didn’t seem that hard. The extra credit was enough to affect 20 percent of the grade. Then I realized most people who would try it are probably just smart enough to get an A already anyways, I know I was.
In my school extra credit like that was mostly for the smart people who dicked around a lot or had difficult home lives and missed tests. That way if you needed to shore up some grades you could get it done outside the normal study routine
In Lithuania we literally have the whole periodic table on the wall in every chemistry class I have ever been to.
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.
Memorizing the periodic table is probably the high-school assignment I’m most angry about to this day.
I’d find that less-useless. You can’t reference the Summoner’s tale in 1 second.
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.
In my highschool we had an English teacher who was super into the Beatles. Like “the second half of the year was literally just learning about the Beatles and it made up like 60% of your grade”. I used to like listening to them but not so much after that year. To this day I don’t know how they got away with that
In Canada even in university I don’t think it was expected to be memorized.
My prof did offer extra credit to anyone who could sing the entire element song in front of the whole class, which was very fun, and some people nailed it.
My highschool teachers did the same.
I’ve always liked those efforts to make bohring content engaging
In my US chemistry undergrad program, we were required to memorize ~40 elements that were frequently used. We had reference material available to us in the test packets, but the test time given was so low that if you hadn’t memorized those elements, you didn’t have time to finish the test.
Our general chemistry class was one of the hardest classes you could take and much of the grading seemed unfair. Very minor mistakes that could propagate throughout your calculations would lose full points. There was never enough time for exams: you were expected to be very sure of how to run your calculations, there wasn’t extra time for you to be unsure or have to redo an entire question because you messed up. It truly sucked.
That said, it was very effective at graduating competent chemists. I didn’t trust any of the biologists, nurses, pharmacists, etc. to do even basic unit conversions unless they took that class. You can often tell well into someone’s professional career if they went through such a rigorous training program because many of the calculations and principles we learned in this class are ones we use daily. I run into PhDs in biology fields who don’t know the difference between molar and molarity, ones who are inconsistent at converting masses to mols, etc.
It’s embarrassing to reach that point in your career and lack these basic skills. I’ll hear, “yeah, but they aren’t chemists, so it’s not so important that they know these things.” If that’s so, then why do they need to do it as part of their job? Skills like these are agnostic to degrees and positions, it’s like learning basic arithmetic for most scientists.
I fucking hated that class and the professor for putting us through that, but that faded quickly with time. He made the rest of our education easier and prepared us well for the work that was ahead.
I’m a biochemist and I think the periodic table is easy to memorize. “Hydrogen, blah blah blah, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen” and that’s it. Wait, hold on, sodium and chlorine are also on there somewhere…
My undergrad biochemistry course was taught team taught by a microbiologist and a molecular biologist because the biochemist got fired for sexually harassing a few students.
The molecular biologist was a cool guy and taught concepts. I got an easy A in that section.
The next few weeks were taught by the microbiologist. That asshole wanted us to memorize a ton of different pathways on our second midterm (cyclic acid, fermentations, photosynthetic, MAPK etc…). Something like 20 total. I took an F on that one.
Luckily the final was a standardize test that all universities in the state used that year. So I ended up with a B.
I don’t understand the “memorize the pathways” style of teaching.
I’m not one of those people who says “Why memorize anything when you can look it up?” That doesn’t generally work because (1) you need to know that a fact exists at all before you can look it up, (2) a lot of problem-solving is done by your subconscious, which of course can’t look up anything, and (3) often you can’t see the big picture until you have learned enough of the pieces, even though learning the pieces seems like arbitrary memorization while you still don’t know enough of them.
However, I still don’t see any point in memorizing lists of arbitrary alphanumerical protein names. Knowing the pathway’s purpose, inputs and outputs, and any key intermediates is sufficient. I can’t think of any scenario where a pathway isn’t the focus of your research but being able to recall the names of all the enzymes and the order in which they act (as opposed to looking them up) is useful in practice.
(But maybe I’m the one who is ignorant of the practical applications of that knowledge… All I can say is that there has been no need for it during the course of my career so far.)
Do you guys have to memorize fluorine too?
It’s been a decade since I took chemistry, and I did not get very good marks in it, but it seems like the elements at the bottom of the table (with exception to Uranium and Plutonium) are just hanging out while the top elements do all the work.
Fluorine is extremely rare in biological systems. (I was going to say “never” but I looked it up and apparently there are a couple of exotic compounds that have it.) However, fluorine is a component of many man-made drugs and poisons. Halogens are generally not incorporated directly into bio-molecules (with exceptions, the chief one being iodine in thyroid hormones) but chlorine plays an essential role in all living things as a free, negatively charged ion.
Some heavier, metallic elements in the form of ions are necessary for the function of many enzymes, but biological systems can’t work with chemically bound metals the way that human technology can. I looked up what the heaviest element with a biological role is and the answer is apparently tungsten (although I’ve never come across an enzyme incorporating tungsten during the course of my work) but even heavier metals can act as poisons by taking the place of lighter, catalytically active metals in enzymes.
It can be fun to look at the Wikipedia article of some weird element that never seems to be mentioned and see what strange uses humans have actually found for it.
If it’s too big to be created in self sustaining fusion it’s too big to give a shit about.
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.
Same.
So during the test the teacher listed element names out loud with no pauses, and you were supposed to write down the symbol while she was speaking, and then another list in reverse. After the last element we had to immediately put the pens down. Whole test took ~45 seconds for 30 elements.
This was so that it was impossible to read from the big table on the wall, you had no time to look away from the paper. You’d miss the next 3 elements by the time you looked away to find the one.
Honestly, that sounds insane. And incompetent.
Whoever made this a requirement did not have in mind to give you a good and useful education.
Not really. As a former math teacher, I used to have kids do speed drill quizzes very similar to that elements chart drill a couple times a week. As in how many basic facts, (addition, subtraction. multiplication and division), with the correct answer can you do in one minute. There are just some basic skills you really need to learn and master before you can move on and learn how to blow things up.
The point of the quiz was not to expect you to get them all correct all the time or even get to the end of the quiz, (I was aiming for 30 correct answers in that one minute out of maybe 60 or 70 problems). But the idea was to build a very basic skill set for you. And so that you wouldn’t be afraid of the numbers, (this is a real stress point for students), and to lessen the fear of learning and adding to your skills by eliminating the stress of where to start. If you confidently know what 7x3 is, that’s one less detail you need to work out and worry over when doing a math problem, (another stress point for students).
Education methods sometimes seem dry and useless and even mean to a young student. But they do actually have thought and reason behind the why a teacher might do something. I could never be bothered to try and teach you something that was pointless. I simply didn’t have the time for that kind of effort. Nor do the vast majority of teachers in a classroom.
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.
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.
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…
Luckily I had a teacher that thought it was bullshit we had to memorize the whole table and “forgot” to cover the wall-sized poster of the periodic table during the exam
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.
