The trend toward memorization homework is part of the larger view of education as social assimilation training and obedience training.
If the homework required "rationalization, not memorization" then the brightest students would easily coast through in minutes the same material that would take the dimmer students hours. With memorization, the curve is flattened significantly and grades are much more closely tied to effort than to innate ability.
All this is intentional and has the desired outcome -- colleges offer many classes where the student who is used to drudgery and memorization can simply thrive by putting in the hours with flashcards, and can then go on to a career where obedience and compliance with drudgery are highly valued traits.
The problem with this is that it misses the more important point, which is that abstract reasoning skills can be taught too, they are just often taught very poorly and so kids who have a small leg up (largely by accident) get a big unfair advantage and in a non-memorization world reap significant benefits.
I'd be extremely concerned if my child were being asked to memorize material that was not strictly necessary for some kind of reasoning exercise.
If the homework required "rationalization, not memorization" then the brightest students would easily coast through in minutes the same material that would take the dimmer students hours. With memorization, the curve is flattened significantly and grades are much more closely tied to effort than to innate ability.
All this is intentional and has the desired outcome -- colleges offer many classes where the student who is used to drudgery and memorization can simply thrive by putting in the hours with flashcards, and can then go on to a career where obedience and compliance with drudgery are highly valued traits.
The problem with this is that it misses the more important point, which is that abstract reasoning skills can be taught too, they are just often taught very poorly and so kids who have a small leg up (largely by accident) get a big unfair advantage and in a non-memorization world reap significant benefits.
I'd be extremely concerned if my child were being asked to memorize material that was not strictly necessary for some kind of reasoning exercise.