Are you old enough to remember when people memorized stuff? When people could quote, as in recite from memory, poems, verses from novels, the Constitution, or sections of the Bible? It seems like a another world. (Go watch the movie Quiz Show and think about the Van Doren's for a view of that other world.)

Does anyone memorize anything anymore? Or has memorization become like spell checking - "I dont need to learn that; the computer does it for me!" Have we lost something in the process?

I have been thinking about short-attention spans, ADD, and the ever increasing amount of information we all handle. I have also been thinking about how little people seem to actually think. Much of our lives is like driving a car; activities that we can do almost without thinking.

We hear "news" but do we actually think about it? Do we ask questions? Do we enquire and check facts? Or do we just move on the next bit of news?

I met a person last year who was totally into the news. So much so, he wanted to be a news anchor. But I can tell you that he knew almost nothing; he knew all the recent stories but seemed completely ignorant of what any of the news meant. Which might be understandable since our commercial news industry almost never talks about the past, the meaning, or the connections between events. News is just reporting the next event, not connecting the dots to find meaning.

I suspect one reason we dont memorize things anymore is that there is so much new stuff, we just dont repeat things that often. The Bible isn't the only book in the house, so to speak. In this information age, there is always some new data, some flashy-lights to take us away from the difficult tasks of memorization and thinking.

Heck, schools today dont even consider memorization important. Memorizing "by wrote" is evil. Instead schools stress "critical thinking". Dont memorize math when you can use a calculator; dont learn to spell when you have a spell-checker, etc. Parents today feel that gifted children are too smart to memorize things like multiplication tables. If they arent happy and entertained in school, the school is failing them.

I recently had a conversation with an older Russian computer programmer. He was telling me a story about one of his bosses who arranged the computer system so that programmers had to go to a different floor to enter their programs. He made the task more difficult to force people to think about what they were doing before doing anything. His belief was that by making computers easier to program by trial and error, it allowed people to think less about what they were trying to do and how to do it in the first place. In other words, doing more but thinking less.

In all honesty, I cannot quote anything. My public school education in the 1970's didnt force me to memorize the Constitution nor do I enjoy memorizing things. That kind of brain exercise "hurt". But so does physical exercise. "No pain, no gain" is accepted by everyone as necessary for sports so why is it anathema to mental exercise? (And given our national waistline and the number of people that would rather sit in the car until they get the first parking space than walk 20 feet, perhaps physical exercise is a dying activity too.)

While I may not be any better at mental exercise than others, I have begun to think of this issue as a real concern. In the past few years, we have heard a great deal of "news" from political leaders that is self-contradictory or just doesn't make sense. But you wouldnt come to that conclusion unless you wrote down the events, connected the dots, and thought about it. If you take each news factoid on face value, with no hindsight, it would seem perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, if you actually thought about it and put it together with past statements and corroborating evidence from other sources, you would see obvious errors and contradictions.

In other words, I think the focus on news and the avoidance of thinking has helped create this new age of truthiness - truth unencumbered by facts. We have more information than any generation in history yet we seem to struggle more than ever with making wise decisions. With huge issues on the horizon, such as war, global warming, and the financial security of our nation, I have a great concern that people are so busy watching the news, they dont have time to think.