Making Memories or Doing Homework
Tonight on the way to my sister’s house for dinner I heard a song from the 1980s, 1988 to be exact on the radio. Here I am twenty plus years later, with two young kids yapping away in the back and I can remember every word. Not only can I remember the lyrics, but I can remember learning them. I was 11 years old and at Myrtle Beach for Easter break. Before falling asleep, I’d lie in my bed and repeat the words:
We both lie silently still
In the dead of the night
Although we both lie close together
We feel miles apart inside
Was it something I said or something I did
Did my words not come out right
Though I tried not to hurt you
Though I tried
But I guess that’s why they say
Every rose has it’s thorn
Just like every night has it’s dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has it’s thorn
And although I could memorize the words, I couldn’t quite resolve them. Young boys have yet to think like this. I can recall to this day my confusion over the night having a dawn. See, I liked Excalibur, swords, and the Knights of the round table. Every knight having it’s dawn doesn’t make much sense.
Well, it doesn’t really matter. I’m now in a car listening to a song I hear once a year and I know the lyrics and I know when I learned them. I can vividly remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings. And I remember this too. Of course this isn’t unique to me, people remember life altering and oddball things all the time.
The ability to form associations is imperative to developing lasting memories. Champions of memory competitions don’t memorize a series of random numbers, well they do, but they remember a series of important events that correspond to the numbers. They assign order to the randomness. We live in world which only makes sense through stories, songs, and events.
I couldn’t help to think about this as I read an Opinion piece in the NY Times called “The Trouble with Homework” by Annie Murphy Paul. What resonated with me was the reliance on more homework despite the lack of evidence to show it’s working. Its a classic example of quantity over quality or said another way, Rote memorization via repetition. I do believe that repetition is needed – it’s a great means to build muscle memory – but. I don’t think it helps to understand.
That is where associations come in. Being able to find similarities and differences between what you already know and what this situation presents is important. As the Opinion piece states, sprinkling in older learning material with new material helps to reinforce it, as does interplaying the subject areas. Make the brain find relationships, no matter how silly
Every Knight has it’s dawn
