Memorizing is NOT Learning!
Posted on November 21, 2015 by Karen Maloy, One of Thousands of Christian Coaches on Noomii.
This article explores essential components to learning.
There is a distinct difference between memorizing and learning. What is most interesting is that most students do not know that. During the first five years of a child’s life is when they are going to amass the most information that they are going to learn throughout any other development stage in their life. With that being said, that is also where the decline for memorizing information begins. By the time a child reaches puberty, the ability to memorize large amounts of energy has declined. It is here when it becomes more essential that students learn vs. memorize information.
Imagine you have a glass half-filled with water in front of you. As you begin to pour water into the glass you can see the water level rising. As the glass begins to overflow you can observe the water flowing down the side of the glass and onto the table. But what water is coming out? Is it the water that was already in the glass or is it the water that you poured into the glass? Essentially, there really is no way for you to determine whether it is the new water or the old water flowing out, and there is no way that you can make sure only the new or the old water comes out. Essentially, that is also how your memory works, where you have no way of determining what information stays in, or what information flows out. Memorization is just the mere act of putting information in, but it does nothing to increase learning as you have not control as to what information remains in.
So what exactly is learning? According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, learning is “the act of a person who gains knowledge or skill or knowledge or skill gained from teaching or study”. Let me first emphasize that this cannot occur with cramming, which is just a temporary physiological condition of placing information into the short term memory. In order for learning to occur two things have to occur – application and transference. Simply put, information has to be applied to real life situations to increase understanding and then to be transferred into the long term memory.
Many students underrate the importance of sleep, and essential undermine their learning experience as it is a necessary component for information transference. It is in the sleep stage where the body rebuilds to repairs the damage of “today”, and also transfers information from short term memory into long term memory. Just knowing this one point alone can do much to increase memory recall and decrease test anxiety. While cramming may meet the first criteria of content application, transference does not occur with the new information acquired, and it just simply escapes into information oblivion. To increase one’s level of competence, a student must first understand the difference between memorizing and learning, learn positive study strategies to increase learning efficiency, and finally to become disciplined in order to follow through with what they have learning. With wisdom comes understanding, and one cannot become an effective learner without it.
Happy learning!
