Memory techniques belong to a group of learning practices that are perhaps the most debated and most controversial of all. It is not difficult to find objections to them, as anyone who looks at Bloom's taxonomy can easily see that it is the ability to remember something that is the least demanding and preferred in education. Memory techniques often don't work in a rational context, but instead engage in absurd associations that have the goal of having a person store a set of phenomena in memory without seeing any clear connection or meaning between them.

Still, memory techniques can also have their uses. You have to remember something. All higher cognitive skills work with memory. Having a good memory has been an essential attribute of education for much of human history. To name a few, St. Jerome translated the entire Bible from memory. Copies of the book were costly until the thirteenth century, and scholars often memorized the whole thing. And today, too, it can be said that working with memory is beneficial. However much one might usually accentuate other components of thought as the most important.

Most memory techniques work based on associations and analogies (like most creative learning or thinking techniques), where individual concepts are linked to create a more easily remembered whole. Associations are a fundamental element of memory functioning, and finding excellent and strong associations is, therefore, very useful in this regard.

For example, one of the techniques works with a story in this way. One invents a plot in which one places numbers and can use them to easily remember the number pi to twenty decimal places, to learn some years or perhaps a telephone number. Similarly, so-called mnemonic aids work, such as Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me - spectral classes of stars by temperature or for planets in the solar system: My Very Elderly Mother Just Sent Us Nine (Pounds).

Another method is called the Method of Loci or the Palace of Memory. The basic idea is to choose a setting, or better yet, a path familiar to you. You place various things in your imagination at critical points (shopping lists, historical figures, etc.). It is said that the more absurd the connection, the better it is remembered, but a certain moderation also works for some. When placing objects, imagining everything as best as possible is necessary.

Relatively many objects can be placed in this thought structure, with the recommendation being that some number is easy to remember and that allows you to verify that you haven't forgotten anything. Equipping works very similarly: you imagine a path through a given environment and its objects. Precisely what you do with them is not addressed by the method. You could write them on paper or perhaps sesthe technique to make a shopping list and then put things in a basket according to it.

The ideal places to place these objects in the mind can be anything you know pretty precisely, so it can be the study, the way to school, or a favourite walking route, but some people use their bodies. It is recommended to keep the same path permanently and change the individual objects you put in it.

Regarding learning, it must be said that this is not a suitable method of working with long-term memory. It is possible...but you're not likely to get much out of it after six months. So, it is more of a practical short-term tool than something that should be the basis of learning. On the other hand, the overall importance of memory to the learning process cannot be ignored. Memory techniques serve to train and improve it, which can have a positive effect on the ability to learn and think as a whole. Other methods include the Master system, numerical method, and acrostics.