We were invited over to my pastor’s house for dinner this week and I had a stimulating talk with Jana.

Rinah is almost “old enough to go to school” as she says. I need to start thinking about what I’m going to do with my children.

We talked about a lot. I can’t put it all down here but I’ve had thoughts buzzing around my head for the last few that I need to write down down bit by bit.

So nakking notes … here goes.

I’ve seen firsthand and heard of different classical Christian schools requiring very young children to memorize a lot.

• the pharaohs of Egypt
• the emperors of Rome
• the kings of England
• the presidents of America

And then I came across a school (not classical, obviously) which had its students memorize this.

• the genealogy of Jesus

What do you want your children to memorize? What are your priorities in educating your children? What are you going to require first? Or is memorizing even necessary?

Eventually, I would love for my kids to know all the pharaohs, emperors, kings, presidents, etc., etc. That would be great! But not if they spend more time studying the writings of pagan homosexual pedophiles and perverts than they do the Bible. Besides which I find it quite racist to concentrate on Western Europe to the exclusion of the rest of the world.

I was never required to memorize lists of pharaohs and emperors and kings but I loved studying history so much that at one point I did know all of them except for the presidents. (My knowledge of US history was fuzzy after Lincoln.)

Right now, Ben is reading Genesis 1 with the kids almost every night and they also know the Lord’s Prayer (in chant form) and Confession of Sin from the BCP. We want to start saying the 10 Commandments, too.

In theory, at this point, I must say I don’t believe in rote memorization. I think cramming and forcing people to memorize things is a good way to make them dislike it and/or forget it pretty quickly.

Right now, my kids do remember a lot of things, but it’s not because we have made them memorize anything. They remember because they are so familiar with it.

I want them to live and breathe the things they remember. I want them to be so familiar with the history of the Old Testament that they are able to list the kings of Judah and Israel or the ancestors of Jesus like they list the names of their siblings, with love, without effort.

I want them to love and remember fewer, more important things forever. I don’t want to force them to memorize a lot of irrelevant, disconnected facts and then forget it all.