How to Learn and Remember Anything

The mind remembers things--anything--best when the items to be learned are presented to the mind according to a particular schedule of "re-minding." This has been known for many decades. A computer program called "Supermemo" helps to organise information for proper presentation scheduling, according to this 100 year old + theory of learning.

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It's too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person's memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains.

...Our capacity to learn is amazingly large. But optimal learning demands a kind of rational control over ourselves that does not come easily. Even the basic demand for regularity can be daunting. If you skip a few days, the spacing effect, with its steady march of sealing knowledge in memory, begins to lose its force. Progress limps. When it comes to increasing intelligence, our brain is up to the task and our technology is up to the task. The problem lies in our temperament....You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe prescription. Wired__via__kurzweilai.net

More information about Supermemo here.

Supermemo is just one of twelve mind hacks presented by Wired at this webpage.

Of course, everyone will not be able to learn and remember everything. Each person has his limits. But in a world where educational systems seem more concerned about proper political indoctrination and orientation than in teaching students to use their minds, approaches to learning that actually work are most welcome.

Why do the schools not try to copy the brains natural methods of learning and remembering better? Many reasons, I suspect. Foremost among them is sheer incompetence on the part of those who teach the teachers. University schools of education are staffed by the ideologically correct, who seem intellectually inadequate to prepare the next generation of teachers to help future generations of students grow up to face a more challenging world.

Futurist Alvin Toffler on the Government School System: Shut It Down!

Famous author and futurist Alvin Toffler has weighed in on the issue of failed and corrupt government schools: he says to shut them down! Here is an interview with Toffler:

You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?

Shut down the public education system.

That's pretty radical.

I'm roughly quoting Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who said, "We don't need to reform the system; we need to replace the system."

Why not just readjust what we have in place now? Do we really need to start from the ground up?

We should be thinking from the ground up. That's different from changing everything. However, we first have to understand how we got the education system that we now have. Teachers are wonderful, and there are hundreds of thousands of them who are creative and terrific, but they are operating in a system that is completely out of time. It is a system designed to produce industrial workers....

...How does that system fit into a world where assembly lines have gone away?

It doesn't. The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we're stealing the kids' future....

...You're talking about customizing the educational experience.

Exactly. Any form of diversity that we can introduce into the schools is a plus. Today, we have a big controversy about all the charter schools that are springing up. The school system people hate them because they're taking money from them. I say we should radically multiply charter schools, because they begin to provide a degree of diversity in the system that has not been present. Diversify the system....

...Here's a complaint you often hear: We spend a lot of money on education, so why isn't all that money having a better result?

It's because we're doing the same thing over and over again. We're holding 40 or 50 million kids prisoner for x hours a week. And the teacher is given a set of rules as to what you're going to say to the students, how you're going to treat them, what you want the output to be, and let no child be left behind. But there's a very narrow set of outcomes. I think you have to open the system to new ideas....

....Integrate the curricula[?]

Yeah -- the culture, the technology, all these things.

Like real life[?]

Like real life, yes! And, like in real life, there is an enormous, enormous bank of knowledge in the community that we can tap into. So, why shouldn't a kid who's interested in mechanical things or engines or technology meet people from the community who do that kind of stuff, and who are excited about what they are doing and where it's going?...

...Let's have a little exercise. Walk me through this school you'd create. What do the classrooms look like? What are the class sizes? What are the hours?

It's open twenty-four hours a day. Different kids arrive at different times. They don't all come at the same time, like an army. They don't just ring the bells at the same time. They're different kids. They have different potentials. Now, in practice, we're not going to be able to get down to the micro level with all of this, I grant you, but in fact, I would be running a twenty-four-hour school, I would have nonteachers working with teachers in that school, I would have the kids coming and going at different times that make sense for them.

More at Edutopia

Readers of Al Fin will find much in Toffler's ideas that sounds familiar. Education in N. America is easily in the top 5 problems--maybe the top 2. If you listen to "solutions" from Clinton, Obama, McCain, Huckaby, etc. you are not going to hear solid answers. Those are the politicians who are liked by the status quo--the current educational establishment. You would only change the schools over their dead bodies.

More on this topic later.

The End of Schools!

The futurist Da Vinci Institute has been working on a detailed report on the future of education for the past 18 months, using several thousand man hours, expert interviews, and various intensive techniques.

“We have identified 12 critical dimensions of the future learning system. However, only the first two need to be in place for the revolution to begin,” says [Thomas] Frey.

The conclusions have been expanded into a 20-page report that will be presented in detail ...[it] will explain the following:

1. * The dramatic shift will happen outside our existing education systems sometime within the next two years
2. * It will be greeted by many with open arms, welcomed by most inside our existing education system, but will eventually cause new systems to develop, and schools as we know them today will cease to exist within ten years. Their replacement will be far better
3. * This new system will be able to unlock the hidden potential within us, creating a new grade of human beings - human beings 2.0.
4. * It has the potential to increase the speed of learning ten-fold, and many will be able to complete the entire K-12 curriculum within one year.
5. * People graduating from the equivalent of high school or college in the future will be a factor of ten times smarter than graduates today

Source

Those are extremely optimistic predictions, given the dismal trends in education in the US generally. I cannot help but agree that any improvements that occur will have to come from outside the current system.

Da Vinci's Thomas Frey is generally optimistic about the future--not just the future of education. But he does not expect everything to change immediately.

Typically, Frey says, it takes time—a quarter-century or so—for new technology to take hold and be accepted. So it’s likely that the next big thing, whether in medicine, transportation or some other arena, already has been invented.

He notes patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office have reached record numbers in recent years. “Knowing that a certain percentage of those filings are cutting-edge technology, and knowing that it takes an entire generation for this to take off, we’re in for one hell of a ride,” he says.

Source

The new report on Education will be unveiled March 27th in Denver. Contact the Da Vinci Institute for information on attending.

Alternative educational curricula such as the Montessori Method or the Garcia Curriculum, focus on teaching of procedural knowledge--sometimes in preference to didactic knowledge. Such an emphasis is important in creating a sense of competence and self-efficacy in children. Only by doing that, will children build a healthy sense of self-esteem and comfidence in meeting the world on their own terms.

Developing Competence in Children--John David Garcia and the Moral Society

Is it possible to create a system of education that encourages children to develop to their potential? Can children learn to be competent and responsible, as well as learned? What type of educational and para-educational curriculum could best make use of the child's innate intelligence, while also instilling positive character traits and an emotional competence that would serve the child's well-being for the entire lifetime?

Many attempts have been made to improve on the failed model of education currently being practised by government schools. Montessori, the Waldorf System, the system developed by Glenn Doman (IAHP), homeschool curricula, and many others.

The most impressive "open source" curriculum I have seen, is the one developed by the late John David Garcia, an inventor/philosopher who spent his last years in Oregon promoting the creation of a moral and ethical society. Garcia's curriculum is built around the Physical World (theory and practice), the Biological world (theory and practice), the Psychosocial World (theory and practice), and the Integrative world in theory and practice.

The theory behind Garcia's educational curriculum is more broadly elucidated in this chapter of the online book, Creative Transformation. A child could be introduced to this curriculum at any age from 3 to 90, whenever deemed ready by the instructors. It is most important in young children to develop a sense of competence in meeting the world. A genuine sense of competence can only be developed by teaching the child effective tools--both internal and external.

It is important to present alternative educational pathways to parents--particularly those who are concerned about the quality of mass production government education. Longtime readers of this blog may recognize most of the ideas in this post from an earlier article dated over a year ago. It is vital to present these useful alternatives over and over again.

Psychological neoteny is rampant in western societies, due to parents, schools, and society in general, which all neglect the development of character and competence in children. The problem is a type of societal rot, and will not get better on its own.

Update: For a fascinating glimpse of the difficulties and rewards of instituting an intentional articulated curriculum into a public charter school, read this account from a high school humanities teacher.

Update2: Here is a real gift: a free online book describing in detail the Montessori curriculum from ages 3 to 12, written by a Montessori instructor. Definitely worth the price of a mouse click.

A Curriculum

Here is a curriculum to ponder. Beginning at age three, and proceeding to age sixteen, this curriculum is conceptually broad and intellectually challenging. Tucked within this chapter of an obscure online book, this curriculum lays the foundation for the type of student who could create the groundwork for the next level.

The Montessori Method is another attempt to create a complete education. Waldorf schooling is another well known approach. Another provider of innovative curricula is Glenn Doman's IAHP in Philadelphia.

Many intelligent and innovative homeschoolers have created a wide array of curricula with some success. Many people will mix and match various curricula to meet the needs of their children. Reviews for some homeschooling curricula can be found at the above link.

Over the years, much effort has gone into creating a truly evolutionary educational method that will bypass the fetid morass of government education. Government education as practiced today, on the other hand, represents the devolution of humankind to primitive level status. It is a race to see whether evolution or devolution will win. The governments of the developed world are putting their power and prestige into promoting devolution. Nothing illustrates the innate corrupting force of large government more than this travesty.

In the end, this is the best curriculum I have seen, for the purposes of trying to achieve the next level through education. It should be clear that I do not think education alone will suffice. Nevertheless, properly designed education opens the doors much wider for more of the newer generations. Next question: where are the teachers who could teach this curriculum?

Where did the curriculum come from? From an inventor-philosopher named John David Garcia. I have mentioned JDG briefly in a previous post, and will probably be referring to him and his work in the future. I was fortunate enough to meet him and spend a few days in his home discussing his ideas and our mutual interests, while he was still relatively strong.

John David Garcia's books are online, freely available. They should be of interest to anyone with a desire to create a more rational and harmonious society.