From the Head of School

 

What You Remember

Grade 10s completed their mock exams this week.  It’s an intense experience for students, but not so much for the supervising teacher.  Teachers have to be alert at all times, so can’t read, email or get on with some other work.  But there is not much to see except students bent over papers, and not much to hear but the scratching of pens.

During supervision to keep myself focused, I used to try to remember what I was doing this month last year, then year before, then the year before that and so on. Even in the first round of these memories, I couldn’t recall many details.  However, memories didn’t necessarily fade evenly.  I could remember the chair and table I sat at for my university finals and the students around me (sadly not the content).

Research suggests that we forget the vast majority of information we come in contact with after just one week.  Within a year, we remember not a great deal more than nothing, all other things being equal.  

But this isn’t a bug in our brain’s design - it is a feature.  Despite my efforts while supervising exams, memory isn’t meant to be a cinema for past experiences.  In real life, you are not likely to meet Good Will Hunting or Mike Ross from Suits - geniuses who can remember everything without special techniques.

We have a brain to help us make better decisions, and memory is vital to this.  We don’t want it cluttered by irrelevancies.  We retain what has a big emotional impact (hence the vividness of my exam hall memory at 21, but not the course itself) and what we repeatedly refer to.  We leave school knowing how to read and write because we used these skills in pretty much every lesson.  We don’t remember Queen Victoria’s reign dates because we only heard it one lesson, we were bored, it didn’t seem relevant to our lives, and we have never referred to it since.

That doesn’t mean facts are unimportant, just they have to be in context and be personally meaningful. 

It has been a privilege this week to witness so much meaningful activity at ISA.  Gus Carmichael in his Thistle Talk article talks of Grade 9’s Youth Philanthropy Initiative. I was lucky enough to be one of the judges, listening to eight highly engaging presentations from students who hadn’t just looked up charities on the internet but had talked to volunteers and recipients and got involved.  They not only contributed to their local community they developed their own characters and abilities.

Grade 7s have been involved in science projects for the Crest Awards. It was great to walk in on a class that didn’t need to be told to get started.  Groups had chosen their experiments and technologies through which they developed and expressed their scientific abilities.  

When students have choice and autonomy, they are far more likely to remember useful skills and concepts year after year, and not just for an exam.

Exams are important: I could see the Grade 10s felt that way. They are a test of character and a chance to demonstrate some part of your learning.  But they are not the purpose of education, and certainly not the end point.  That is the adult the student becomes.  What they carry forward, down each year, is a testament of its impact and relevance.