The Power of Forgetting (33 page)

I don’t doubt for a second that we’ll come to learn more about the true power of mental exercise in disease prevention—not just in the mind but also in the entire body. Until we have all those clues figured out and solid proof of what we can do to extend the longevity of our minds and bodies, I think we would do well to keep our minds and bodies engaged as much as possible. This means physical challenges to the body and cognitive challenges to the mind. Even if you’re someone who is destined to get a brain disease owing to age or genetics, delaying its onset for even a few years by maintaining an active brain could dramatically improve your quality of life.

Q:
Can these ideas help American schools overcome their problems with math and science education?

A:
My strategies are intended to be a fun and creative supplement to the amazing work that teachers do every day in the classroom rather than a way to supersede it. I aim to unleash the brainpower that is already inside people and help them see the potential they have in all subjects, not just math.

Additionally, I believe that people who have learned to love something when they are young more often than not will continue to love it and practice it for the rest of their lives. My hope is that this book will help parents and teachers change the attitude some kids have about learning, math, and memorization into a more positive one. I also hope that
they come to appreciate the utility of forgetting in a whole new light that enhances their brainpower.

Q:
Why does my son perform so well on homework but then struggle with test taking?

A:
In a word: confidence. Once you make a mistake, it can haunt you for a long time. The first couple of times I did a show, if I made a mistake, I thought the show was done, over with, finished. I always felt that it was the end of the world. But I eventually learned to sustain—and more important, to nourish—my confidence. Fueling one’s confidence amid mistakes and the occasional (serious) fall is easier said than done. But there are things you can do to help your son regain his confidence and nurture it for a lifetime of success—and challenges. It helps to start by sharing with him the ways in which he can prove he’s smart while not under pressure. Teach him a few card tricks or mental math shortcuts that he can share with friends or in front of an audience. Help him produce a live show in front of family members and friends at your next informal dinner party.

Q:
How can I motivate my daughter more?

A:
First, realize that motivation begets motivation. When a kid gets her first A, that becomes her expectation, as well as her source of motivation every time she wants to achieve another A. While you want to help your child set realistic expectations, you also want to make those expectations as high as possible. Until she lands an A, she won’t have that expectation.

Second, as you know by now, I’m a proponent of keeping learning fun, cool, and exciting. Get your daughter to love and enjoy what she has to learn. Use the strategies and
games in this book to push her memory building. Help her organize her thoughts better. If you’re helping her prepare for a test, go back to my exercises where I make it fun and cool and transport those concepts back to traditional schoolwork.

It’s an attitude thing more than anything. I see kids who love a certain subject and who do so much better than other kids who are actually smarter but don’t like the subject. If your daughter truly doesn’t like a subject, you have to just make it more enjoyable for her. Create rewards for her—incentives for a job well done, or for at least trying. Unlike many adults, most kids are extremely open-minded and willing to try new things. Kids don’t give up as easily as adults do, either. They will happily accept second and third chances. What’s more, kids are used to having to do some things that they don’t like. But still, if you can make even the most mundane tasks fun for your daughter, it will change everything.

Q:
How can this system help someone who has autism, ADD, or learning disabilities?

A:
I try to tell kids and adults that to learn a lesson, they must do it four, five, or six times until they’ve got it mastered (that is, they get it and get it well), then go out and show it off. For these individuals, this may be the first time in their life they feel smart. It’s like running a marathon: Everyone will run it at a difference pace but still arrive at the finish line. Of all the people I work with, those with disabilities are the ones who most often come back for more. They are so motivated and excited about feeling smart for the first time.

Q:
My child is falling behind in school. What can I do?

A:
Many parents who come to visit me after I’ve performed a show lament that their child has serious anxiety
about math or is doing terrible overall in school, and they may tell me they’ve resorted to expensive tutoring to figure out “what’s wrong” with their child and help him or her get up to speed with peers. But what I typically find is not that a child is delayed developmentally or that he or she isn’t smart. Much to the contrary—and much to the parents’ relief—all that’s missing usually is a little confidence and help with focusing. (Do I sound like a broken record by now? I know I’ve been harping on these issues for the greater part of this book, but they must and should be repeated.)

Unfortunately, tutors rarely teach kids how to learn. They review what the child is supposed to retain but offer no help in effortlessly retaining that information. And that’s what I’m teaching here. The other problem with tutoring is that private teachers charge, on average, $75 an hour—so at six hours a week, which is customary, parents are paying roughly $450 per week, or close to $20,000 a year! (Tutors at some private schools can cost upward of $35,000 a year—in addition to the tuition.) That’s a lot of money that few families have at their disposal.

Try this exercise: Create a random two-hundred-digit number and have your kid memorize it, just as my son did. At bedtime, do one or two numbers at a time. Every night or every morning, add another number. Help your kid find a strategy that works to keep the growing number in his or her head. Try this exercise with letters, too. Or numbers and letters. Mastering all two hundred digits will make your kid feel like he or she can do anything!

Q:
I’m a teacher who loves this memory system. But how can I teach these ideas without my students losing interest in the traditional route, especially when it comes to math?

A:
Even though my book outlines shortcuts and untraditional ways of arriving at solutions to problems, especially in the math department, I’m not suggesting that the traditional methods do not have value. Much to the contrary, students need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in the usual manner before they can fully appreciate and master the shortcuts. They also must have their multiplication tables down flat. All of my strategies act as supplementary and complementary material to whatever it is you want to teach, whether it’s traditional arithmetic, history, complex calculus, or even carpentry. They are geared to help students optimize how they learn and to take the “overwhelming” factor out of the learning curve.

One way you can teach memory strategies and foster a classroom of students who learn to think on their own and to manipulate concepts from various sources is to send them home with a list of twenty items. This list can encompass any subject matter, from pop culture (such as a list of the top movies of the century or favorite restaurants) to an academic list of biology definitions or important historical events. Instruct them to go home and find a clever way of memorizing the list in a certain order. The following day, have each student share how he or she created a memory technique … and suddenly you’ll have a whole new collection of unique memory strategies homegrown from your homeroom!

Q:
I’ve heard that certain television shows and videos are “bad” for young kids’ developing brains. What do you think of that? Can some TV shows and videos turn preschoolers’ minds to mush?

A:
Kids should be introduced to numbers and patterns as soon as possible, long before they can learn their
multiplication tables, and this can be achieved without any use of a television or computer. I also believe that children need to be introduced to certain programming when their brains are equipped to handle the information appropriately. These days, kids typically start watching television at four months of age; the average preschool kid watches more than ninety minutes of television a day.

As I was piecing this book together, a new study emerged that said it’s not only how much but also what they’re watching that can have an impact on children’s attention spans. The study, published in the
Journal of Pediatrics
, explored how fast-paced programming can affect what psychologists call executive functioning, which is your ability to stay on task and not be distracted. More technically, executive functioning is a collection of skills that govern how we behave and that involve working memory, delayed gratification, and problem solving—all the skills we need to function well. Executive functioning is what allows us not only to remember things and solve problems but also to plan. This particular study looked at 60 four-year-olds and broke them into three groups. One group watched a nine-minute clip of
SpongeBob SquarePants;
a second watched a nine-minute clip of
Caillou
, a realistic PBS cartoon about a preschool boy; and the third group drew pictures for nine minutes instead of watching television. Immediately afterward, when the researchers tested each group’s executive functioning, they found that the PBS-viewing and picture-drawing groups performed equally well on the tests. The
SpongeBob
group, however, scored significantly worse—the implication being that watching a full half hour of a fast-paced cartoon show could be detrimental to a preschooler’s executive functioning.
The researchers speculated that
SpongeBob’
s more rapid pace and fantastical characters—such as a talking, pants-wearing kitchen sponge who lives under the sea—might be too much for preschoolers’ brains to take in. Granted,
SpongeBob
is not intended for this audience, but many parents still expose their young ones to these programs from a very early age. As parents, the question we really should be asking ourselves is: How can we prepare our youngsters to build this executive function?

According to the experts, one answer is by promoting good old-fashioned play, which entails many skills I’ve outlined in this book—getting kids to use their imaginations, be creative, focus and concentrate, and listen to and follow directions so they can reach a goal. Educational, age-appropriate programming might have a positive effect, but the key term here is “age-appropriate.” (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids under age two not watch any television.)

The other thing to bear in mind is that we need to set good examples. As adults, we’re constantly trying to do too many tasks at once, such as texting, being on the computer, and talking on the phone all at the same time. Kids mimic their parents, and unless we teach them how to focus and concentrate on one task at a time, especially during those formative years when the brain is developing, we’re not preparing them optimally to establish lifelong good habits and behaviors.

Q:
I am a business executive who has always struggled to make myself stand out, especially when it comes to my ideas, so I can change my organization and gain the promotion I deserve. In addition to applying the strategies in this book, what else can I do?

A:
Your question addresses an important branch of the memory topic: the art of making yourself memorable. In fact, this book wouldn’t be complete without a final nod to the concept of memorable ideas. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to make their ideas better known by more people, whether to sound smart, to write a provocative essay or speech, to strategize a brilliant campaign of some sort, to win an election, to be a better leader, to get their message to resonate as loudly as possible, or just to be heard, taken seriously, and able to make a memorable impression that stands the test of time. Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus scare tactics and claims circulate effortlessly. (Just consider the number of Internet hoaxes the spread virally or check out your spam folder that quarantines junk.) Meanwhile, people with important ideas—business-people, educators, politicians, journalists, and others—struggle to make their ideas “stick.” And therein lies the heart and soul of the wonderful 2007 book
Made to Stick
by Chip and Dan Heath. The authors answered these important questions: Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas?

The Heath brothers bring up a good point: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think thicken along with our experience. The more we know, and the more we specialize in a certain field, the harder it becomes to yank ourselves out of our little boxes and tap areas of creativity that were easier to access when we had more to learn. It’s an interesting paradox, but what I find even more intriguing is the Heaths’ claim that we can continually foster innovation by focusing on the art of communication: We can better convey our ideas, they assert, by using elements that maximize memory, such as simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, emotions, and storytelling. (These key words, in fact, became their acronym for their six principles; note that the initial letters spell out “success”—well, almost.) Here’s a great case in point that they use to demonstrate a most memorable event.