Schools have extrapolated form chess professionals that storing information into long-term memory ahead of time will prepare them for expertise later
A cognitive model of learning which suggests that learning is only the commitment of information to long-term memory has gained precedence in schools. There’s good evidence that people who have more information stored in their long-term memory are more expert than those who have less. Advocates of applying this model to education are fond of talking about experts—in particular, chess experts. Studies of chess players have found that expert chess players can remember the positions of pieces on a chessboard far better than novices—but only when the pieces are in meaningful positions, like that might come up during a game. If the pieces are randomly arranged, the novices and experts both have similar trouble remembering the positions.
In a real chess game, background knowledge and expertise mean that experts have an advantage over novices, because they can clump what they see into meaningful chunks. This enables them to manipulate large quantities of information, unlike the unfortunate novice who has to remember the position of each individual chess piece. The difference between experts and novices isn’t their working memory. In this model, the difference is simply the amount of information stored in their long-term memory.
In schools, those who advocate for this model suggest that the purpose of education should be to get as much information as possible into the long-term memory of students. The evidence, after all, shows that the difference between experts and novices is their long-term memory stores. They argue that, just like the chess players, having large stores of background information will enable children to manipulate more information in their working memory and to think like experts. Once the knowledge is there, so the theory goes, then creativity and higher-level thinking is possible.
These theories underpin the philosophy of several schools which have recently opened in the USA and UK. In the UK, Michaela Community School in west London is an example. Children at schools like Michaela are drilled in every lesson. They repeat material again and again, and are rigorously tested on it every day. For homework, they self-quiz. They follow along with what the teacher says in their books, are compelled to read over 10,000 words a day, and can be called on at any time to keep them focused on the lesson and to avoid the temptation to drift off into a daydream. Every moment of their day is controlled. It’s a lot like a memory laboratory, no distractions allowed.
It all makes perfect sense if you see education as an extended memory experiment. We know that information is forgotten over time and, in order to keep it in memory, it has to be repeated. At schools like these, that’s how the system works. It’s built on cognitive science, as they are fond of saying.
References
- Fisher, Naomi. (2021). Changing Our Minds Chapter 2. Learning – Scientists, Processors and Rats (p. 47). London, UK: Robinson Publishing.
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Type:🔴 Tags: Politics / Education / Psychology Status:☀️