On the other hand, some introductory courses should NOT require memorization of any kind (e.g. anything in the humanities). As an example, the study of history is about seeing patterns in events and analyzing what was going on. Forcing students to memorize what year the Whiskey Rebellion happened in detracts from that goal. I majored in history, and never took a single exam that asked for a factoid.
Maybe you were such a good history student that you absorbed a lot of facts without consciously trying to do so. But in a course on 20th century history, for example, it would be reasonable to expect students which countries were on the Allied and Axis sides, who the leaders of those countries were, what years various countries entered the war, etc. A factoid is "a brief or trivial item of news or information". Many facts are not factoids.
You missed my point completely (and...ahem, managed to show that you don't understand how the humanities actually work).
We're talking about college-level classes. The point of a college education is (or these days,
should be) to teach students how to THINK, not how to memorize things like the list of axis vs. allied powers. That stuff is way, way,
way too trivial for a proper undergraduate class.
Students in a history class should be learning how to assess ideas, relate events and motivations, and put their own thoughts on paper in a coherent way. They should NOT be answering questions like "Which of the following was NOT an Axis power in 1944?" These questions create factoids out of information.
Said another way, you don't get to the part about analyzing the Maginot line without knowing who France was trying to protect itself from and why.
