Re: [Phys-l] Memory and how it works

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

My comment was not about lectures in general, but about how I questioned
that a specific thing was remembered from a presentation.  I contended that
the comment had never happened because similar comments do not seem to
appear in the presenter's other writings.  The article is purely about how
memory works.

One lesson that can be learned from it is that people often remember things
that never happened.  Often if you have a particular paradigm or conviction
you remember what you expect, and forget the things that conflict.  You also
fill in details later that never happened.  We have all seen this with
students.

A particular example of this is the idea of learning styles.  There is no
evidence that they have any influence on learning.  But people swear by them
because they interpret evidence that is ambiguous as being positive even
when there is no evidence to prove the connections.  The link to the YouTube
presentation appears in a previous message by Horton.

Of course I always cast doubts on lectures, but my previous reference was in
regards to a specific incident on this list, not to lectures in general.
The memory article is quite good, and repeats many things reported in a
NYTimes article of several years ago.  The Discovery article does detail
some of the relevant research and the people involved can be easily Googled
and relevant research articles can be readily traced.  Read it and see.

As to promoting the value of reasoning, that is what students really need to
learn, but the statistics are dismal there.  The evidence is that
conventional teaching of math and science teach students about doing things,
and leave them utterly unable to do them in unfamiliar situations.  They
can't transfer.  Only 25% of HS graduates can do proportional reasoning, and
formal logic is a much smaller percentage.  Some students come into a
college physics course not knowing that identical size, but different mass
objects push up the water in a cylinder the same amount when they sink to
the bottom.  This is supposed to click in between ages 7 & 9, but for many
it does not, even after doing the dismal measuring of volume by displacement
labs.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> All well and good - but many (maybe most) of us learned physics quite well
> from lectures and sweat equity.
>
> I can't remember having ever used anything that I learned in my HS and
> college Biology courses but have done quite well in life never having used
> it. I suspect the same is true for 95 percent or more of the population in
> regard to physics. I think we are overteaching science - and to the wrong
> people. I would prefer that students leave primary and secondary schools
> with the ability to reason, write well, and have some basic level of
> numeracy. Science can be picked up later when there is an interest in it.
> A few physics sections in HS for those who might have an interest in
> majoring in science in college should be sufficient. Three or more
> different levels of tracking in elementary or secondary science is simply
> wasteful - in fact I can't imagine a reason why it should be taught in
> elementary school.
>
> Bob at PC
>
>
> At one time I questioned whether a particular person accurately remembered
> something that was said in a lecture.  So a bit of information about
> memory
> might help people understand what actually goes on in your memory.
>
> Here is an article from Discover that might be helpful to one and all on
> this topic.  It may also help some understand why some pedagogies work
> better than others.
>
> http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul-aug/03-how-much-of-your-memory-is-
> true
>
> John M. Clement
> Houston, TX