Memorise texts, is it necessary?

While I was watching Jewel in The Palace episode 37( 8TV, 8.30pm Weekdays), a Korean traditional drama series which I was addicted to recently, the heroin’s medicine teacher asked her to memorise all the medical books. The heroin shockingly asked, “So much? But I do not understand them, how do I memorise them?” Her teacher told her just to memorise them, as she would know them later on. Then, I thought of an explanation of memorising texts from a Chinese poet in a television show (NTV7, Happy Family, 5.30pm, Weekdays). The host asked the poet whether primary school students should study and memorise Chinese sayings. The poet answers, “It’s like a cow eats a huge amount of grass, but it doesn’t mean that she will digests all her food. When she feels hungry, she will take out the food from her stomach and chew again. Same goes to our knowledge. When it is fed into our minds, it may not be useful. However when you have reach a certain time or situation, you will process the information and actually understands it. For example, you might not understand the saying ‘少壮不努力，老大图悲伤’(in chinese. Please switch encoding to simplified chinese to view these text) now, but when you are old and you did not make any effort to make your life better when you were young, you will really understand the meaning of the saying.” So, next time when you were asked to memorise something, please do so. Who knows, maybe someday you might save someone from committing suicide?