Why Understanding Matters More Than Memorisation

Memorisation has an important place in education.

Students need to remember facts, words, formulas, rules, definitions, and basic skills. A learner who has to look up every multiplication fact or scientific term cannot devote enough attention to more complex thinking.

But remembering something and understanding it are not the same.

A student may memorise a formula without knowing what the quantities represent. A child may remember a definition without being able to explain the idea in their own words. A learner may reproduce an answer from an example but become completely uncertain when the question is presented in a different way.

Memorisation can help us carry knowledge.

Understanding helps us use it.

This distinction becomes especially important as students progress through school. The further they go, the more often they are expected to connect ideas, explain their reasoning, solve unfamiliar problems, and apply what they have learned in new situations.

A learner who has memorised an answer may succeed when the question looks familiar.

A learner who understands the idea has a better chance of recognising what to do when the question looks different.

The goal of education is therefore not to choose between memorisation and understanding.

It is to put them in the right order.

Understanding gives knowledge meaning. Memorisation helps us retain and retrieve it.

When the two work together, learning becomes both useful and lasting.

2. Understanding and Memorisation Need Each Other

It is tempting to think that understanding and memorisation are competing approaches to learning.

They are not.

Memorisation without understanding is fragile because it is difficult to hold disconnected information in memory. When an idea has meaning and is connected to other knowledge, there are more pathways through which it can be remembered and used.

But the reverse is also true.

Understanding alone does not remove the need to remember important basic knowledge.

Many students reach higher year levels without having developed secure recall of basic addition or multiplication facts. They may understand the concepts of addition and multiplication, yet still need to count on their fingers or perform manual calculations for simple facts.

This can consume valuable time and can also lead to errors, particularly when calculations are performed quickly under pressure.

For example, a student working on an algebra problem should ideally be able to focus on the algebraic reasoning rather than using a large part of their attention to work out simple multiplication facts.

When basic knowledge becomes sufficiently secure and automatic, it frees the learner's attention for more complex thinking.

This is why effective learning needs both understanding and appropriate memorisation.

A learner needs to understand what something means, why it works, and when it can be used.

The learner also needs to remember important knowledge so that it can be retrieved when needed.

The two strengthen each other.

Understanding gives knowledge meaning. Memorisation makes knowledge readily available.

Good education therefore does not ask students to choose between understanding and memorisation.

It teaches them how to build both.

3. When Basic Facts Become Tools for Higher-Level Thinking

The value of memorising basic facts becomes particularly clear when students have to solve more complex problems under time constraints.

In many school assessments, students are expected not only to arrive at an answer but also to show their working, explain their reasoning, use appropriate mathematical language, and present their response clearly.

If a student has to spend a great deal of time working out simple additions, subtractions, or multiplication facts, less time remains for these higher-level tasks.

A student may understand the mathematical concept being tested but still produce an incomplete or poorly presented response because too much of the available time was consumed by basic calculations.

The teacher marking the work may see only the final response. The underlying difficulty may not be obvious.

This is why secure recall of basic facts matters.

When simple calculations become sufficiently automatic, they require much less conscious attention. The learner can then devote more of their mental capacity to the mathematics that actually requires thought.

This does not mean that speed should become the main goal of mathematics education. Accuracy, reasoning, understanding, and clear communication remain essential.

Rather, basic knowledge should become sufficiently secure that it supports higher-level thinking instead of competing with it for attention.

A multiplication fact that can be recalled readily is not merely a memorised fact.

It is a tool that allows the learner to think about something more complex.

4. Can the Learner Use the Knowledge When the Question Changes?

One of the simplest ways to distinguish memorisation from understanding is to change the form of the question.

A student who has understood an idea should have some ability to recognise it even when the wording, order, or context changes.

This is not always true of memorised answers.

In my own school days, I remember classmates who could give the correct answer only when questions appeared in the same order in which they had been written in their notebooks. If the teacher changed the order, they sometimes gave the wrong answer.

Years later, as a teacher, I encountered a similar situation. Some students would ask for the question number or the opening words of the question before they could remember the answer.

This suggested that they had remembered the answer in connection with a particular cue rather than fully understood the idea itself.

Understanding makes knowledge more flexible.

A learner who understands an idea can recognise it when it appears in a different form, explain it in different words, connect it with another idea, and use it in a new situation.

Science provides many examples of this distinction.

A student once gave me this explanation of Newton's First Law of Motion:

"A body doesn't move if pressure is not applied. If pressure is applied on a moving body its speed is increased or decreased."

The student had remembered some words and ideas associated with force and motion, but the explanation did not express Newton's First Law correctly.

The difficulty was not simply a missing sentence from memory. The underlying concept had not yet been understood securely.

This is why asking a student to explain an idea in their own words can be more revealing than asking them to repeat a definition.

A student who has understood may not reproduce the textbook wording exactly, but the essential meaning should remain.

The important question is therefore not only:

"Can you remember the answer?"

but also:

"Can you recognise, explain, and use the idea when the question changes?"

5. Change the Question, Not the Concept

A teacher does not always need a completely new question to check whether a student has understood an idea.

Sometimes a small change is enough.

A question can be changed by altering its wording, reversing the order of information, using a different example, or asking the learner to explain the same idea from another point of view.

For example, a student who has learned a mathematical procedure may be asked to solve a similar problem with the numbers changed.

A science student who has memorised a definition may be asked to explain the same idea using an everyday example.

A student who has answered a question correctly may be asked:

"What would happen if we changed this part?"

"Would your answer still be correct if I changed this condition?"

The purpose is not to catch the student out.

It is to discover whether the understanding can survive a small change.

This can be done gently and naturally during ordinary teaching. A teacher may simply listen to the student's explanation, alter one part of a familiar question, and observe what happens.

If the learner can adapt, explain, and reason through the changed version, there is evidence that the knowledge is becoming flexible.

If the learner becomes completely dependent on the original wording or example, the teacher has discovered something useful: the student may need more understanding rather than more repetition of the same answer.

This is one reason good questioning is such a powerful teaching tool.

A small change in a question can reveal a large difference between remembering an answer and understanding an idea.

7. Understanding Gives Memory Something to Hold On To

When information is learned as a collection of unrelated words or steps, remembering it can be difficult.

Understanding changes the situation.

When a learner knows how an idea connects to something already understood, the new knowledge has a place within a larger structure. The learner is no longer trying to remember an isolated piece of information.

For example, a student who understands why a mathematical formula works has more to work with than a student who has memorised the formula without knowing what its parts represent.

If the student forgets part of the formula, the underlying understanding may help reconstruct it.

Similarly, a student who understands a scientific process can often explain it in several different ways. The exact textbook sentence may be forgotten, but the idea can still be recovered.

This is one reason understanding can make learning more durable.

It gives memory something to connect to.

However, understanding does not eliminate the need for practice and recall. Important knowledge becomes more useful when it can be retrieved readily.

The strongest learning therefore often develops through a cycle:

Understand → connect → practise → remember → use → understand more deeply.

Each part supports the others.

A learner may first understand an idea imperfectly. Using it in different situations can strengthen that understanding. Repeated retrieval can make important facts easier to recall. That easier recall can then free attention for more advanced thinking.

Learning is therefore not a choice between understanding and memory.

They can work together in a continuous cycle in which each strengthens the other.

8. Make It Make Sense Before Asking Students to Remember It

Students should not be made to feel that needing to memorise something means they have failed to understand it.

At the same time, they should not be expected to memorise a concept that has not yet been made meaningful to them.

When a student says, "I don't understand this," asking the student to repeat it more times may not solve the real problem.

The first question should be:

"What part does not make sense to you?"

Sometimes the explanation needs to be changed. Sometimes an example is needed. Sometimes the learner needs to connect the new idea with something already familiar. Sometimes an earlier concept needs to be revisited.

Once the idea makes sense, memorisation can become much more purposeful.

There is, however, another side to this principle. Not everything that must be remembered can be logically derived.

Students need to learn certain conventions, names, symbols, vocabulary, spellings, basic facts, and other information because these are part of the language of a subject.

The important distinction is whether the learner understands what the information means and why it matters, even when the information itself must simply be remembered.

Understanding should therefore come before demanding rote repetition whenever understanding is possible and relevant.

A student should be able to say:

"Now I understand what this means. I need to remember it."

rather than:

"I don't know what this means, but I have been told to memorise it."

That difference may seem small, but it can change the learner's entire attitude towards study.

Memorisation then becomes a tool for learning rather than a substitute for learning.

Conclusion

Understanding and memorisation are not enemies.

A learner needs understanding to know what knowledge means, how ideas connect, why something works, and when it can be used.

A learner also needs secure recall of important knowledge so that it is available when needed.

Basic facts that can be recalled readily free the learner's attention for more complex thinking. Understanding, in turn, gives those facts and ideas meaning and connections.

The most effective learning therefore brings the two together.

Understand what deserves understanding. Memorise what deserves ready recall. Then use both together.

A teacher can encourage this process by changing questions slightly, asking students to explain ideas in their own words, connecting new knowledge with familiar ideas, and giving learners opportunities to use what they know in unfamiliar situations.

Parents can support it by asking not only:

"Did you learn this?"

but also:

"Do you understand what this means?"

and:

"Can you explain it to me?"

The aim is not to produce children who can reproduce large amounts of information.

It is to help them develop knowledge that they can understand, remember, retrieve, connect, explain, and use.

That is when learning becomes more than memorisation.

It becomes knowledge that belongs to the learner.