As we move deeper into the digital age there may be related issues, which will cause us to be separated from the key factors which keep our mind and body together.
After all it was only 600 years ago that Gutenberg invented the printing press and accessible knowledge to a wider population. (Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439 – 570 years ago) The native North Americans believed that photographs taken of them captured their souls. And in the last century, the father of nuclear fission, Albert Einstein asked what was the use of remembering his own telephone number when he could look it up in the phone book.
We learn by Memorising, Understanding and Doing – a combination of these key learning styles. But information to be learned has its pitfalls and today around 33% of under 30 year olds don’t need to retain information when they can ‘Google’ it. Information about themselves is readily available on Facebook, on Friends Reunited or Twitter for their friends or whoever gains access.
Are they separating and fragmenting their valuable ‘self’ information and leaving it disintegrated on scores of web sites to be undervalued by others? Are they forgetting how to learn about themselves and why?
The Organisation guru David Allen is known for his insight in proposing that we get stuff out of our heads, which will lead to mental calmness. Everyday stress results from the mind trying to forget everything which is worrying it. So he suggests you keep your to-dos in a ‘trusted system’, which can be a notebook, a computer file, a list, etc. and you will gradually relax.
The dancer Twyla Tharp offers one elegant idea in her book The Creative Habit where she says ‘I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into making the dance…. The box makes me feel organised, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet…Most important though, the box means I never have to worry about that, because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box’
With us at work we try to copy what I learned from Stuart Cosgrove of Channel Four Television and BBC Scotland Sports broadcasting fame – his company always had 3 levels of work-in-progress files on his desk. Now for us there are the Green files, which are ready to go; the Amber files, which are on hold but ready to be progressed to Green; and Red files, which for the moment are at stop.
The Renaissance revived the ‘method of loci’ or Ars memoriae, the art of memory. Its roots lie in ancient Greece, although much of what is known about it comes via the Renaissance from Roman sources. At its simplest, the art of memory was a technique to assist a person to remember long tracts before printing was invented e.g. officials, politicians, messengers. The technique required the individual to visualise a building, particularly the rooms within it, with which they were familiar. In each room they ‘placed’ or pictured mentally, articles that prompted an associated idea or image. The object selected as they entered each room would often be striking in some way, again to strengthen the image – grotesque, crude, rude, brutal, colourful as best suited the subject. To remember the text, the person would mentally enter the building and ‘walk’ through the rooms on a predetermined route.
The success of the technique owes much to the fact that the human mind is not always logical in the way it processes information and, in order to understand how it worked, it may be useful to divide memory into two types; natural and artificial. Natural memory is untrained and almost unconscious whereas artificial memory is trained to have had thoughts, ideas and facts more forcefully ordered within it.
Where is this technique today? Is it used in learning? Does it have an application in the digital age?
We teach the key principles of encouraging ambition and expectation for all our students. We look for progression in self-development towards self-fulfilment and self-actualisation. The search for happiness is based around the individual’s determination for achievement of Self Purpose.
The Philosophers of the Renaissance in their attempts to achieve ‘oneness’ with the divine spirit or self, harnessed the art of memory.
So in the key learning styles it is not enough to do and understand. I think there is a place still for memorising and not just tables and chemical symbols.