"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
What we attend to quietly shapes the people we become. In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Nadezhda Gribkova about beauty-first education, the patient work of looking, and the relationships that make genuine learning possible. Drawing on Dostoevsky, Rowan Williams, Jane Jacobs, sacred icons, and her own experiences as a student and teacher, Nadezhda explores why formation cannot be reduced to transferring information. Her own education, as a fifteen year old in a new country, significantly shaped her life. Her teachers, she explains, took her seriously by tackling difficult books in conversation and asking good questions toward the person she would be but was not yet. She offers simple practices for recovering attention, including memorizing poetry, observing art without rushing to interpret it, and returning to the patterns that remind us what is true. Their conversation invites parents and educators to consider how beauty can deepen family culture, strengthen human connection, and orient an ordinary life toward flourishing. At the heart of the conversation is a hopeful claim: beautiful things are not luxuries reserved for experts. They are gifts that can ground us, enlarge our vision, and help us remember how to live.
What if the life you long for is formed one teaspoon at a time? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with classicist, writer, and homeschooling mother Nadya Williams about the small patterns that fill a life: reading aloud on the couch, gathering friends around books and snacks, welcoming children into imperfect homes, and writing in the margins of family life. Together they explore motherhood, Christian human dignity, education, AI, and the hope of building a humane culture through local, faithful, ordinary practices. For mothers who feel stretched thin and are hungry for wisdom, this conversation offers a gentle invitation to begin with one small good thing.
After nearly 20 years of homeschooling, this mother is honest about both the work and the gift of educating her children at home.