One amazing thing about children is the many, many songs for which they have memorized the lyrics. There is something about how the musical harmony helps the memory process work, and maximizes what memory can do.
The frustration to teachers is why students aren’t quite able to amass the same amount of working or long-term memory to do the same with the information taught in class. Even if a teacher lets students listen to music while studying facts and figures, it does not necessarily mean that increased learning will be achieved. How is this to be understood?
Memory is complex, and loaded down with information we get all day long, from everything we do, hear, say and see. The environment creates events and images that go into our working, or short-term, memory. It is then that we become aware and think. Following the initial work done by our working memory, the knowledge then moves into our long-term memory which is responsible for factual and procedural knowledge.
During the process when information moves from working memory to long-term memory, the actual act of ‘remembering’ is occurring. When the knowledge in the long-term memory is thought about (analyzed, evaluated, debated), and therefore what is in the long-term memory is returned into the working memory so that some thoughts can be generated about it, that is the process of learning.
Cognitive neurosciences believe that the more facts you have stored away in long-term memory, the stronger overall academic achievement will be. These basic facts can be called upon to support more complex ideas, however it is essential that what students learn go through this process of being stored in the long-term memory.
Some people create some sorts of mental images to help them store information. Some people will make a ‘castle in their mind’ and store salient facts in specific rooms. Some people create mnemonic devices to help ensure memorization of facts. Some people create songs to remember complex information. For many, it is the act of reading that creates and stores these memories.
Students need to develop means by which they use their memory, and are aware of how and why they are using it to store information. It is an individual process and there is no one right way. What is fairly certain, though, is that the more you know, the more you know and the benefits of knowledge are infinite.
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