Among the register of things once known, now less known, is the fundamental capacity to spell. And if it would seem that a loss so detrimental to the world of letters—in truth, to the civilized world—would raise a greater alarm, such is not the case. Never before has such degeneracy been found less worrisome, less cause for shame.

“It’s just spelling,” I’m often told, in response to my protests. The statement would be contemptible itself, were orthography the only study considered superfluous these days; alas, the circle widens to grammar, logic, history…but I digress.

Now, I can be as innocent a speller as the next. “Rhythm” will forever plague me, and my instinct counsels an “e” in “separate” instead of an “a.” But unlike many of the authors I’ve been asked to edit over the years, I’m shy when it comes to the great enterprise of spelling a word. Squinting at the magical thing, I’ll look it up, then search for a way to remember, longing for a mnemonic device to assist me. It was always the best part of my education, when a teacher “showed me a way” to recall.

What joys they provided; what relief they bestowed. To be assured of how “I” and “E” work together with their confederate “C,” barring limited exceptions, was like a call from a tip line, exposing the dastardly workings of two rogues meant to foil my recess plans (for we had to stay in to study our tests if we didn’t do well; doubtless they’d censure a teacher for doing such a sensible thing today). The sing-song rhyme scheme of that old mnemonic all but whistled of the playground.

But the power of verse was not alone in the arsenal of reminders. My first-grade teacher delighted us with the onomatopoeia of our home state’s name: “M—I—crooked letter—crooked letter—I—crooked letter—crooked letter—I—hump back—hump back—I.” There were scads of others too, and though I would certainly miss things on tests, they were never those things.

So when I edit or advise these days, and see not only jarring transpositions of letters, but also fused words, bizarre pronoun references, and bastardized agreements (mistakes repeated so often that the “typo” excuse cannot stand), I tentatively wonder if the author has ever heard of the old games. To the person, the answer is “no.”

Puzzled, I’ve asked those younger than I if they were taught anything at all in this fashion—not just in spelling, but in Grammar? (prepositions: the “mouse on the house”—he can stand “on” “beside” “in” the house, dig “under” “through”, etc.); History? (“In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed…; “Listen my children and you shall hear…”); Astronomy? (“My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles”: a Milky Way acronym that worked fine before Pluto was demoted from planetary status—and boo to that, by the way.); Math? (“a pint’s a pound the world around”).

I’m laughed at when I bring these up, as though such methods smell of the abacus and the writing slate.

Researching a bit, I see that such pedagogical tools based in memory have fallen out of fashion; “It’s just memorizing,” seems to be the given answer.

“Well, yes,” I say in return. And why is that not educational? It’s been part of formal culture since the Greeks. After all, memoria was in the classical rhetoric canon. No matter how solid your logos or how stylin’ your ethos—if you couldn’t remember your points, you couldn’t find your way around inside your own head. Memory cures brain vertigo.

The analog to this prejudice against memorizing would be those who downplay discipline in favor of romance. I had a teacher of the “new math” that was so into making us “celebrate” the number “7” that none of us knew how to multiply it. We got to draw pictures of “7,” and hold seven apples, but the hard work of 7 times 7 wasn’t her thing. The next year, I was saved by an old woman who handed out multiplication tables and taught us tricks (“odds will visit evens, but evens won’t visit odds”—7: 14, 21, 28, etc., but 8: 16, 24, 32).

It’s why I like facts, because they’re accessible to me; it’s why I like catechisms, because they boil things down. They do not stymie invention, imagination, metaphor; they do not stand in the way of love. Instead, they make all those things possible, real, because they provide a known way to a sought place. And they do so by means of delight. It is a lovely saying—to learn something “by heart”—perfect and apt, because surely that is where memory lies.

But in the way of this world, the government is stepping in. Just last year, the UK decided in favor of more modern methods and directed teachers against the “I before E” rhyme. It gets tiresome to ask, “What will they do next?”—but I assume it will be to kill the joy that the old Englishman had in reciting his “History of British Monarchs” (“Willie, Willie, Harry, Ste, Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three…”), which I daresay would have outlived a thousand newer methods, whatever the going government sCIEnce had decided to teach.

Fie, I say. F-i-e.