Memorize the Presidents
Alert Readers know that Your Business Blogger(R) advises students and clients to memorize important presentations.
Brute memorization is mocked by educracrats, the union thugs well-meaning liberals who run public education.
Brute memorization is loved by home-schoolers, the brilliant parents and students who are get education right.
There are some facts that must be learned. Must be memorized.
Our Penta-Posse was home-schooled for a season. And have now moved into the public school system. (High school sports beckon.)
The idea for this YouTube comes from The Dude. His elementary school teacher once asked about the presidents and who followed whom. The Dude knew the answer, and volunteered a bit more.
“It seems that you know all the presidents,” says The Dude’s teacher. “Can you name them in order?”
“Sure,” says The Dude. “How do you want them? Forwards …or backwards?”
Learn how at the end.
Here are the presidents in order Washington to Obama:
And reverse order Obama to Washington:
Want to learn the State Capitals and the presidents in order? Then order States and Capitals and the Presidents by Jerry Lucas
Thank you (foot)notes,
Be sure to follow Your Business Blogger(R) and Charmaine on Twitter: @JackYoest and @CharmaineYoest
Jack and Charmaine also blog at Reasoned Audacity and at Management Training of DC, LLC.
Gorgeous family on every level. Hats off to the parents of these kids.
I know you’re in DC and all, but did you really just recommend a book with the States, Capitals and Presidents that costs $44.74? Did you get a bailout? LOL!
Yes, that is one expensive book. Only our government could afford.
We get all our books used. Cheaper. Usually.
Jack
If your kids are gonna spend time memorizing lists (rather than poetry which is almost always better), there’s much more important stuff for them to memorize than the list of Prezs. For instance, I’d say any of the following lists will help develop a kid’s intelligence more than a list of POTUSs. In particular, learning these lists will improve performance in, and readiness for, SEVERAL fields, scientific/technical AND artistic/humanistic. Even a very specialized list like the twenty amino acids common in life and their side chains will improve writing skills by giving the student an early start on learning to explain things which at memorization time are outlandish and incompletely understood by the memorizer, on knowing when to say “… for reasons I don’t understand (yet)” Any of these lists below will give much more intelligence bang for your memory bits (IMHO). Some of them are long lists but if you just memorize part of one equal in size to the list of POTUSs, you will still get more benefit (IMHO) than from the POTUS list. Others are very short so you can combine them or mix and match until you get a composite list about equal in size to the POTUS list.
* The periodic table of elements, the approximate date of discovery of each element and why it wasn’t discovered sooner, general characteristics of, and at least one important historical fact about, each.
* The various wavelength ranges of different types of electromagnetic radiation and how we experience them and how they interact with matter, from radio through gamma.
* The first four digits of, and meaning and history of: Pi, e, the square root of two, the square root of one-half, the speed of light through vacuum, Planck’s constant, Boltzmann’s constant, Avagadro’s number, all powers of two which are less than a thousand, all prime numbers less than a hundred. The charge on an electron in Coulombs.
* Conversion factors between English and Metric units, and history of the English ones.
* Definitions of three unequal infinite numbers.
* Melting points of water, boiling points of nitrogen and helium. Uses of the latter two.
* The wars the USA has engaged in, general characteristics.
* The Bill of Rights.
* The states (united), general characteristics of each.
* The Greek alphabet.
* The warring parties in WWI, and their alliances.
* Same for WWII.
* The common sub-cellular organelles and their structures and functions and discovery-histories.
* The twenty amino acids common in life and the characteristics of their side chains (charge, whether they prefer to be surrounded by water or grease, and special properties). In fact they should memorize the structures even without knowing what they mean. Also the five nucleic-acid bases, they should be able to draw them.
* The countries, languages, and religions of the world.
* The current US Senators and Supreme Court justices, who appointed each of the justices and a brief but complete description of their confirmation hearings. Also, a list of Supreme Court nominees who have been rejected by the Senate since 1970, and the reasons for the rejections.
* Important well-remembered Renaissance, Classical, Romantic, Modern composers.
* Same, for painters, sculptors.
* Friendly greeings, thanks, the colors and the numbers from one to ten in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Latin, ancient Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Old English.
* Table of Contents of any book whose title begins with “THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF …”
* The twelve crainial nerves and what they do. (The mnemonic is “Oh, oh, oh, to touch and feel Val’s glistening v*g*na and h*m*n!” Use the first letters.)
* The regular polyhedrons.
* The cities of the world in descending order by population.
I can think of more but I don’t wanna bore you.
Anyone care to dispute with me the proposition that any of these lists is better, benefit-per-info-bit-memorized, than a list of the names of the Presidents of USA or even of their names and general characteristics? I’m open to any argument.