Memorization

[Karl-G]

This topic came up in another discussion. Some have found it surprising that I can remember the names of 20 dancers with some characteristics after an evening at Taboo or Boardwalk. It's only because I am a slow learner.

 

Memorization has for some years been considered by the official American educational establishment as a VERY BAD THING. Making students memorize anything is generally forbidden in American schools. This will stifle their creativity. So students no longer memorize the multiplication tables nor the capitals of all the states nor the major rivers of the world nor a single poem. The results, as we know, are that American students do not know the difference between Croatia and Kansas, have no idea what interest they are paying on a credit card, and cannot remember or enjoy a single line of poetry for their entire lives (among a multitide of other disasters).

 

Can you imagine the reaction if you were a teacher today and walked into a classroom of 16 year olds and said: "Part of your homework this evening will be to memorize 20 sequences of ten random numbers and get them 100% correct tomorrow, not 50% or 60%, but 100%. And you will memorize three poems of 20 lines each." There would be screams of disbelief, impossible, outrageous, never done, refusal. Parents would start calling the VP immediately, and the phone would ring off the hook.

 

And yet, you know, every nitwitted teenager does precisely this every day without blinking an eye. Ask any teenager with a cell phone - how many telephone numbers can you recall, and you must have every digit right. How long does it take a teenager to memorize and be able to remember for a year, a sequence of ten random numbers? Do they repeat the numbers to themselves over and over for a couple of hours? Nope. They hear the sequence for a telephone number for a new cute girl or cute guy in their class just once, and it is memorized and it is there, clear and sharp and correct, for as long as they are interested. (I know they can key it into the phone, but they know it and could repeat it if you ask.)

 

Are you as amazed as I am by the dancers at Taboo and Campus? Sylvester, who is not the brightest of kids, knows the words to every popular song in English and in French (and a number in Spanish) for the past eight years. He can recite the lyrics, when I ask him, to any song. His memory is astounding. Francis and Jean-Sebastien can do the same, even Sammy. They all can. Most of these dancers are boys who never graduated from high school and did poorly in school. (They would say it was because they "couldn't remember all that stuff!") I can not recite a line of a single popular song. Do they sit in a dark corner and recite the lines over and over every night for a week. No. If they hear a new song once, or maybe twice, they have it. When they see a movie, once, they can remember lines verbatim. After I see a movie, I am lucky if I can remember who was in it, and I certainly cannot remember words spoken quickly once. Yet many people can. When I see a car going down the street, I will remember it as a "red car" or a "silver car." Teenaged boys will recall the make, model, year, accessories, and all of this after a split second glance as the car races down the street. I could only tell you if it was red or silver.

 

How can a kid do that? I have a 5 year old nephew. For years, I have been the family champion of the card game, "Concentration". Christopher asked if I would play it with him. My sister taught him a few weeks ago. He got 50 pairs while I got 2. (We play with a double deck.) Last time I play with that kid. Are their brains being well-trained at school? How can I harness my brain to be 1/10 as sharp as the typical teenager's? As I leave Taboo or Boardwalk, I am happy I can manage to remember the names of 20 dancers and what they looked like.

[Luv2play]

Your post was very interesting to me. I have problems remembering the names of more than 2 or 3 dancers that I might meet in an evening and a week later even those names are gone. I'm pretty good at numbers but I have a method for remembering them (I look for patterns).

 

But my brother has the most amazing memory that I know. When he went to his 40th class anniversary several years ago, he laid them in the aisles by standing up and reciting all the boys in his year, alphabetically, just as they were called out each morning in roll call at the school assembly.

 

Well, he did go to the school for 12 years, from the first year to the senior year so he had a lot of time to memorize them. But to remember them 40 years later!!! I know it was not just a trick, since he remembers the oddest details of our childhood, stuff I forgot years ago but when he mentions them, they come back to me. He's also a whizz with numbers. Some people just have "IT", I guess.

[Guest zipperzone]

I think people with poor memories (like me) are missing a great deal. When I try to think back to my childhood, growing up in Toronto,or details of my early employment, the images are very hard, if not impossible, to retrieve. I can get a fuzzy blur but not really enough to satisfy any feelings of nostalgia I wish I could have. As for remembering actual conversations or who said what, when and to whom...

forget it!

[Luv2play]

Maybe growing up in old "hogtown" is what did it to you LOL. There might not be anything memorable to remember!!! :7

[Karl-G]

Maybe it's genetic. My mother clearly remembers many things from when she was 2 and 3 and thereafter, with considerable detail.

[Guest zipperzone]

>Maybe growing up in old "hogtown" is what did it to you LOL.

>There might not be anything memorable to remember!!! :7

 

Well that's a good possibilty - but it doesn't explain the two years I lived in Montreal which are also a bit of a blur (but late summer nights spent on my knees on Mount Royal are crystal clear)