"Through memorization, students begin to mimic the best that is in authors, employing their patterns of thought, lines of argumentation, and knowledge in their own thinking and academic work. Such engagement awakens their minds, sharpens their reason, and forms their character."
April 01, 2026
Bring memorization back to schools
The Hill • Daniel Buck
What happens when schools stop asking children to hold anything in mind for themselves? This piece makes a calm, timely case that memorization is not a dead educational relic but a way of strengthening attention, deepening thought, and handing on a cultural inheritance worth loving.
The Hill
In this episode of Forged, Chris Hall reflects on the formative power of the “common arts”—the ordinary skills and embodied practices that introduce us to the givenness of the world and manifest our humanity. Drawing on stories from the classroom and the farm, Hall argues that formation and education flourish when intellectual study is joined to hands-on craft, inviting students into apprenticeship, real responsibility, and attentiveness to the natural world. He also addresses the cultural divide between academic learning and vocational skill, urging a recovery of an older vision in which the liberal arts, practical arts, and fine arts enrich one another for the sake of a fully embodied, fully aware human life of discipline, delight, craft, and calling.
In this episode, Lynette Hull invites us into a conversation about art, faith, and the quiet transformation that can happen when the two meet. With warmth and wisdom, she reflects on creativity as a spiritual practice and on the ways beauty can draw us deeper into meaning and connection. It’s a thoughtful and inspiring exchange that will leave you curious to see the world, and perhaps your own creative life, a little differently.
This short film offers a glimpse into how students are formed through daily practices of learning, attention, and care.