Not as emphasized these days but when I was a kid I remember memorizing "the road not taken", The Lord's Prayer, the 23rd psalm, and the first few stanzas of "Paul Revere's Ride", and the preamble to the constitution. I'm sure there were more that I've since forgotten.

What do you remember memorizing?

I deliberately memorized the exact height of Mount Everest- 8848m. Not sure why, just felt like something it was worth knowing as a kid- to this day I can recall it instantly.

The start of the Rime of the ancient mariner, up to the start if the tale. Always meant to add more, but it's a lifeling task. If i'm ever marooned on a desert island with a poetry book that includes it, i'll have a go :-)
Solomon kanes homecoming by robert e howard. Thats the longest poem i've ever managed to memorise.
http://euchoo.net/blog.bk/book/export/html/159

Thousands of song lyrics. But i need the music to act as a mnenomic. Which i always find a little odd.
I do make a point of memorising songs without music, much harder, but you can then sing them without music.

I went to a Church of England Primary school (the first school you go to starting at 6) and though it had C of E in the name it wasn't really all that religious (much like the Church of England some would argue...) so when we had a new teacher in my second to last year there, he was shocked we didn't have morning prayers and was amazed that none of us even knew what the Lord's Prayer was. He quickly went about changing that and every day we had to recite the Lord's Prayer so it's now burned into my memory. I don't really have much use for it myself these days other than impressing people that don't think I know it :D

Same with C_A with song lyrics. I still know all of the lyrics for the entire Green Day album American Idiot despite not being a Green Dy fan for many years :D

Basic stuff, the 50 states and their capitals, multiplication tables and things of that nature. There are still entire albums I know by heart. Funny how music can do that.

perpetualstudent wrote on May 18^th, 2017 at 9:11am:

Not as emphasized these days but when I was a kid I remember memorizing "the road not taken", The Lord's Prayer, the 23rd psalm, and the first few stanzas of "Paul Revere's Ride", and the preamble to the constitution. I'm sure there were more that I've since forgotten. What do you remember memorizing?

I memorized all of this save "the road not taken" plus the Presidents of the Continental Congress and the US presidents in order.

Interesting you mentioned times tables. My mother religiously tried to drum the times tables into my head and I managed to remember them... for about a week if that. Turns out I have dyscalculia (dyslexia but with maths basically). She also tried to teach me to read analogue clocks and I just about got the hang of it after some intense lessons. She used this cardboard teaching clock she used with the 3 and 4 year old kids she worked with. At the time I was 16 :D Maths is still the enemy but I've got a lot of coping strategies and can manage in day to day life.

We think our daughter has dyslexia. We are getting her tested soon. Strangely enough shes great with numbers. Sort of the opposite of you. I wonder if these things are really disorders sometimes. Maybe as people a percentage of us are "designed" to naturally specialize. I was always good with reading, writing, art, creativity and weirdly enough had a great memory for scientific facts. Yet Im horrible with math. I wonder how different society would be if we taliored kids education towards what they naturally excell at. That makes more sense to me.

Oh... as far as memorization what about the most difficult thing you've had to memorize? What say you PS?

Nobody had to memorize The Village Smithy? The Gettysburg Address?

Songs are very easy for me to memorize, and Schoolhouse Rock was part of how I got the times tables memorized. I also used songs to memorize the names of the books of the bible (all 66 in order).

For me poetry was difficult. I know it's easier for most people but for me it was just weird. I had an easier time memorizing dialog from movies.  ;D

I forgot.   ;D

I never memorised times tables. Always found it easier and more beneficial to simply add up as I went. As I could do this faster than most could recite a memorised table, nobody ever knew :-)

I also had to memorize the times tables which for some reason I resisted.  I could be a little butt pain.  The Catholic Church had me remember volumes of stuff.  As a Cub Scout I played Abraham Lincoln in a skit.  I had to remember a lot of lines.  I got a standing ovation.  That was my only experience with acting, at least on a stage. We had to memorize the Periodic Table.  We had to memorize lots of things.

I had to memorize pi to the 20th digit for extra credit in math class. Like many others here, i also commited the miltiplication tables to memory. I failed pretty miserably at memorizing the periofic table, only remembering up to fluorine.