Comment by keiferski

If you zoom out and look and the shift in educational systems from pre-industrial revolution to modernity, memorization is a key topic. Basically educational reformers wanted a switch from memorization-heavy classics-based education with lots of Latin and Greek – to one with less emphasis on memorizing and more technical focus, more “understanding” and so on.

Like other big cultural shifts from the time, the correction was necessary but also probably went too far in the opposite direction.

Which is a long way of saying that memorization is underrated and it mostly has a bad reputation from anti-Victorian reformers.