C H A N G E

Forgetting something ?

 

        The world is ever changing like water under wind; green technology is being developed to help heal our world out of the dustpans of old rusted cars, cures for cancer being built on top of the back bones of iron lungs, and illness and intolerances developing out of the old rinds of yesterday’s preservative filled bread.  One thing that does not seem to change but stays ever constant is school. Parents know exactly what their children will be going through; they have been through the exact same process themselves. Perhaps that is the problem then? This process of our country’s where children are put into grades based on age and are pushed to do as well as their top peers even if they are not ready, to make them work on a schedule, to teach them to find the easiest answer and quick as possible.  Realistically speaking, are they learning anything? Many students will run into the problem when they get home where they ask their mother or father for help and are met with the answer of, “I don’t know.”

 

          A large reason for forgetting is the rate of forgetfulness and lack of review. There is an old saying that if you don’t use it, you lose it, and that stands true with the rate of forgetfulness. Twenty four hours after a child leaves a classroom, or does the homework for that class, they are bound to forget the information. It has been finished and will not be covered again until the rest review for the chapter. The problem is that when they get to the test review, unless their teacher was bothering to review them often over the material, it will feel like they are starting from scratch again. The material will feel vague and muggy instead of clear and crisp, easy to use.  That is because by day two of having learned the material, only twenty percent is remembered.

 

          That is where reviewing comes in handy; “By reviewing the information on Day 2, about 24 hours after learning it, you bring your retention back up to 100%. However, instead of losing most of it after one day, your brain is now trained to recognize that this information is important because of the repetition. “ ( Kimeshan, 2013) This is followed up on day seven and day thirty with even small review sessions but greater improvement in memory, as shown in figure I. Schools often practice the day two review, especially in mathematics classes, but are pressed to move on afterwards by a timeline to testing.