We've all spent several years in school. From kindergarten to high school to higher education, we've spent hours learning. Our education has covered the alphabet, vocabulary, basic grammar, a variety of notable historical eras, people, or events, an array of mathematical topics, and a sampling of sciences. In theory, we should know quite a bit about a lot of things from so many years of learning, yet there is so much that gets forgotten. Everyone remembers "the basics" of how to read, write, and (most of the time) compute simple math. Everyone hopefully knows that George Washington was our first president and that Earth revolves around the sun.
But what about everything else?
Specific battles from the Revolutionary War.
The quadratic formula.
The plot of *insert Shakespeare play of choice*.
Kohlberg's theory of moral development that you just learned in psychology one or two semesters ago.
It isn't practical to expect all of that information to stick around -- our brains can only hold so much. But I wonder how much we actually learned in the first place. The definition of learning is "acquiring knowledge of or skill by study, instruction, or experience." The definition says nothing about losing that knowledge or skill once you've attained it. A personal belief is that, if you've truly learned something, it won't leave you. It may not always be at the forefront of your thoughts but if it ever came up again, you would know it.
Too often, students hold enough information about a subject to do well on a test and then it's gone. Or they don't hold the information at all. An immediate conclusion to jump to is that the teacher did not do a good job. That may be the case but it is far more likely that the teacher's style was not conducive to that particular student's best method of learning. Schools concentrate so much on drilling curriculum into students' heads and meeting all the state requirements that a very important thing gets left out: no one teaches kids how to learn.
Everyone's mind works differently, which means there are countless ways to learn something. Some people are able to read a book or whatever the teacher has written on the board and have an understanding of it. Others obtain information from listening to the teacher or whomever is speaking. There are those that need to be doing something hands-on in order to master a topic. The list goes on and on. Ideally, teachers would vary their lesson structures to accommodate the variety of learners in their classrooms, but that doesn't always happen. Therefore, it falls to the individual to find the learning methods that work best for them.
While there is nothing you can do to change the way a professor or teacher structures his or her class, there is a lot you can do on your own to format the information in a way that fits your learning style. Linguistic learners can read the book, watch/partake in skits, make flash cards, etc. Logical/mathematical learners can make flowcharts, look at graphs, do puzzles, or create Venn diagrams. Musical learners can memorize a jingle or short song, write a rap ("Hamilton," anyone?) or even play guitar as they study. There are several other types of learners as well as countless strategies each learner can use. Not only will your grades probably go up but the chances that you'll actually retain the information a lot longer. Once you know how you learn best a whole realm of possibilities opens up to you. Then you see that learning is not the tedious chore it may seem like at times, but is really an incredible and special thing.
