It's a thing with some teachers in some places. The quality of education in the US is hugely variable, because standards and curriculum are largely left up to local school systems with widely different funding and priorities.

I agree with you. Though some people out there do really love being flesh books.

In my US chemistry undergrad program, we were required to memorize ~40 elements that were frequently used. We had reference material available to us in the test packets, but the test time given was so low that if you hadn't memorized those elements, you didn't have time to finish the test.

Our general chemistry class was one of the hardest classes you could take and much of the grading seemed unfair. Very minor mistakes that could propagate throughout your calculations would lose full points. There was never enough time for exams: you were expected to be very sure of how to run your calculations, there wasn't extra time for you to be unsure or have to redo an entire question because you messed up. It truly sucked.

That said, it was very effective at graduating competent chemists. I didn't trust any of the biologists, nurses, pharmacists, etc. to do even basic unit conversions unless they took that class. You can often tell well into someone's professional career if they went through such a rigorous training program because many of the calculations and principles we learned in this class are ones we use daily. I run into PhDs in biology fields who don't know the difference between molar and molarity, ones who are inconsistent at converting masses to mols, etc.

It's embarrassing to reach that point in your career and lack these basic skills. I'll hear, "yeah, but they aren't chemists, so it's not so important that they know these things." If that's so, then why do they need to do it as part of their job? Skills like these are agnostic to degrees and positions, it's like learning basic arithmetic for most scientists.

I fucking hated that class and the professor for putting us through that, but that faded quickly with time. He made the rest of our education easier and prepared us well for the work that was ahead.

Brazil here, we had to, me and my friends even made some vulgar funny songs (to teenagers at least) to help memorize it, I had a pretty bad chem teacher.

If teacher is shitty, he will force students to memorise it, as mine.

American here - we didn't have to memorize it. All we had to do was know the groupings (Noble gas, metalloids, etc)

We were expected to memorize it, yes, along with the properties of each column and generally what went where.

But that was like the first part of chem, and after that test we had the table up on the front wall.

Memorizing the periodic table is probably the high-school assignment I'm most angry about to this day.

We had to memorize a small part of it in Turkiye too, but there is a new curriculum coming up which has a chance of changing that.

Czech here, also had to memorize it. But our school system here is 90% just memorizing shit, it's a fucking joke.

In Lithuania we literally have the whole periodic table on the wall in every chemistry class I have ever been to.

In Spain we did have to memorize it. Truly idiotic. People just invented mnemonic phrases to get through the exam and that's it. It served no educational purpose whatsoever.

Binas in the Netherlands

My school was barely 15 years ago, but we also had a thin book handed out to us in 7th grade or so that contained charts and references for pretty much everything in a very condensed form. Periodic tables, formulas for math and physics, chemical and physical attributes for a bunch of materials, ... And the entire ASCII table for some reason.

That was in Germany during the 00s and I still have that book, and three or four copies I stole over time.

In the UK we had to memorise up to 20 (Calcium), but that was alongside knowing how the elements are grouped and orbits of electrons etc. for GCSE chemistry (age 14-16, end of secondary school)

When I was doing my Chemistry class in like 6th grade (Eastern European btw), we had to memorize it as one of our first assignments lol. Ofc, we didn't need to know the full table but progressively learn the first 30-50 elements over the span of few months.

Are you talking about Binas? All the homies love Binas.

In Canada even in university I don't think it was expected to be memorized.

My prof did offer extra credit to anyone who could sing the entire element song in front of the whole class, which was very fun, and some people nailed it.

My highschool teachers did the same.

I've always liked those efforts to make bohring content engaging

In America, we didn't have to truley memorize it. For tests we had a reference packet that included the table.

That being said we did have to memorize a few major ones.

Its also important to recognize education is a state by state thing, not federal. The curriculum in Texas can be different than the one in Florida. Even teacher to teacher, I could see one class having to memorize it while the one next door doesn't.

I had to memorize it in university. And I didn't even study chemistry, but "engineering science". As a matter of fact: I actually always disliked chemistry.

You were lucky. Many education systems around the world still use memorization instead of comprehension as a measurement of learning.

It might be, I didn't take chemistry in high school but those I know who did spent weeks memorizing it.

It's easier to verify rote memorization than actual understanding so naturally shitty schools focus on the former at the expense of the latter. Most American schools are shitty by academic standards.

My teacher, in germany, used memorising it as a punishment. Like four dudes in my class had to do it.