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The aural tradition That explains why in gurukulams students spent most of their time in committing to memory entire books. This practice had endowed our forefathers with phenomenal memory. Even in the middle of the last century every day elementary classes started with loud recitation of multiplication tables and simple rhymed works like 'Aathichudi' and 'Konraivendhan'. With the advent of calculators it is considered no more necessary to commit multiplication tables to memory. Don't castigate memorising I have often heard intelligent students and educationists decrying 'cramming of information into head by students'. Particularly students who register outstanding scores by memorising notes are looked down upon by their more cerebral classmates. True, the purpose of education is not to create pupils who could gobble up and vomit the commercial notes. At the same time, it is unwise to totally castigate memorising. Formulas, definitions, historic events, biographical data, poetry, quotes from literary texts and a whole lot of other information need to be learnt by rote. There is nothing unbecoming in this. A notion also prevails that to memorise is to lack creativity or originality. Nothing could be more wrong. To learn is to remember the right thing Data and information acquired by diligent study should be assimilated into the system and become wisdom. Wisdom gets enriched by disciplined thinking, writing and teaching. You can't be really very creative about Boyle's Law, or the year of Sepoy Mutiny, can you? Even a fiction writer has to be right about his facts. An artist has to remember the basic colours, how to synthesise new colours from the basic ones,
The Palkivala miracle I have seen people who could multiply two 6-digit numbers faster than a computer. Obviously they know multiplication tables by heart and they have their own technique to arrive at the product in a jiffy. If you are fortunate enough to have listened to Nani A.Palkivala's annual budget review speeches, you will know what an analytical, original thinking mind can do with facts and figures. Without a scrap of paper in his hand for reference, he would reel off budgetary allocations for various sectors, compare them with that of previous years' figures and explain the merits and demerits. His speeches were never dry despite the statistical content because his fine oratory used to be peppered with quotations from Shakespeare and Shelley. It was the deadly combination of a phenomenal memory with extraordinary original thinking ability at work. Learning never goes waste Let us remember that toppers do not reach there by memorising alone. Their synthetic and re-creative intelligence reconfigures their knowledge to come up with new formulations. Without a fund of knowledge, creativity will be vacuous. Human brain is wonderful. Its capacity is largely unutilised. I have wondered at my own ability to recollect at the most appropriate time, lines of poems learnt as a child. While learning them, I was not even aware of their significance. But now, there they are, nuggets of wisdom, shining in all their depth and brevity, ready to be used any time. Memory and creativity are complementary
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Before John Gutenberg invented the printing press, our forefathers used cured palm leaves upon which they wrote with an iron stylus. The very process was painful and making even one copy was a time consuming process. Then there was the risk of the 'copyist's devil' like the printer's devil of today. These factors, among others, made it impossible for individual students of yore to have a copy each of the work they were studying.
the play of light and shade and the geometry of objects and spaces. Outwardly they may look spontaneous while working. But the spontaneity is the product of long years of keen observation and storing their observations in the appropriate memory slots.
Educationists, students and parents should stop placing a lopsided emphasis on memorising or on originality of thinking. They are not mutually exclusive. Like a plant after harvest is ploughed back into the soil to feed the seedling, memorised facts become fodder for creativity. One complements the other. And that happens to be the strength of the Indian intellect. Let us be careful not to erode it.
