learning and memory….
My question today…Is there a co-relation between memory and learning?
The pundits of our times, will readily have us believe, that without memory, learning cannot happen. Is this why our educational system rests heavily upon rote-learning and cramming?
Notice, a 97 percenter today,is almost certainly a student who has the capacity to memorize huge chunks of knowledge.
What’s the easiest route to success in today’s examinations?
Simple.Study hard.
Simply put, but not so simply accomplished. For, that five-letter-word ‘study’, conceals within its simple exterior, another world by itself. Study is another name for ‘strategies of success’ in this academic rat-race. Today,one needs to study smartly,in order to do well academically.
A child is trained to ‘study’ even before he begins to go to school. Nursery rhymes….A,B,C, D,………….1,2,3,4………he memorizes or learns. There I go, uttering memory and learning in the same breath. Are they synonymous? I wonder. Is it possible to learn without memorizing?
What is the fate of a student who cannot memorize? How does he hope to scale those towering mountains of theorems,tables,definitions,formulae….that lie on his way to academic success? Perhaps some unscrupulous tuition master will drill it into him by some well-practiced means and help him master the ‘strategy’.Or perhaps, he will suffer the ordeal of trying his best , and remain an average student in life. Because, he hadn’t learnt how to memorize .
Is it too wishful of me to even dream of a day when a child will walk up the path of learning, straight,without leaning on to any clutches whatsoever, ….of memory, of knowledge, of skills,of marks or degrees,…a path where everything else remains just an aid to learning? Where learning is a choice . A process of growing from within.
And no one else has the right to judge how far he’s reached on this path. This child of my dreams will continue to grow, uninhibited, lapping up all he can learn from around him, free . At last.
I would like to add something to the last comment.
1. Rote learning is a choice and not a compulsion.
2. Examinations like olympiads, Mental Aptitude papers in NTSE-like exams, IITJEE, AIEEE, Architecture exams and others based on understanding test not your rote-learning and memorization but concept-formation, application and most of all analytic ability, learning on the run and resolving power.
3. Life is not a rote-learning test but an application of what you learn.
4. An advantage of rote learning is that you can rely on it even when you are nervous / tensed etc. in exam conditions, probably that is why girls end up higher in the school-examinations.
The thing to note is that rote-learning isn’t and can’t be enforced but is desirable under certain circumstances.
It’s not the system, but the students who are responsible!
There are some things which so-called better systems do not allow the students to know,
like things which have to be known and cannot be understood in any way!
That is why Indians have a better GK than other guys!
However, everything else is upto you.
If you want to rote and forget it’s your wish.
If you want to understand and retain it’s your wish.
History is not memorizing a few lines and biology is not mugging up a few hormones, enzymes and latin names, and chemistry is not memorizing a few equations and formulae, likewise maths or electro-magnetism are not memorizing a few theorems and equations.
What you see is what you want to see!
If you know the concept you can derive the formulae.
But if you know the formulae you cannot understand the concept!
That is where the difference lies.
And to make myself amply clear,
Learning is different from being successful.
Educational excellence is not success.
Academic brilliance is not the pinnacle of success.
Getting a 95+% doesn’t guarantee you a job, let alone make you a scientist or and engineer or a doctor or a professor/teacher.
Then how is it supposed to make you a successful person?
So, why lay so much emphasis on % of marks?
What does it lead to?
Precisely. Very pertinent questions indeed. But a change in our mindset must be achieved for a better, freer , more creative educational system.