Every mile a memory

When Yanjaa Wintersoul closes her eyes and tells you what is on any given page of the 2018 IKEA catalogue down to every last detail, it seems like a magic trick. 

After all, the catalogue of 328 pages has over 4,000 items listed, and if you ask her what's on the photograph on, say, page 53, Yanjaa could tell you every detail sans error -- how many people are in the photo, if they are wearing glasses, what decoration piece adorns the fireplace. 

It is as fascinating as watching a Derren Brown piece of mentalism, except here there is no subterfuge, no big secret to how Yanjaa does what she does. She simply remembers. 

Yanjaa is one of the brightest stars in the geeky sub-culture of memory sports, where memory athletes compete to memorise, under strict rules and regulations, things like entire decks of playing cards, or (random, never-before-seen) epic poems that go on for page after page, in ridiculously short amounts of time. 

They then try to regurgitate what they have committed to memory -- all in front of judges and the audience. Someone stumbles and says Ace of Hearts instead of Jack of Hearts on card 22, they are gone. Someone else recites the order of the entire deck flawlessly, in the fastest time, and they are crowned champion. 

For those of us who have trouble remembering our own phone numbers, these memory competitors must be seen to be believed. 

And yet, any memory athlete will tell you, there is nothing extraordinary about their brains. They are not gifted with the ability to effortlessly swallow and cough up enormous amounts of information like supercomputers, nor do they possess photographic memories, a trait that is more myth than reality. 

What these memory athletes rely on, heavily, is imagination. They will tell you again and again that the brain is an association machine, and we remember better when we place something in context. If we are able to form memorable images and connections in our heads, we remember better. 

Let's say the number 716613 needs to be committed to memory. Sure, it's small enough that you could probably just remember seven-one-six-six-one-three, but also, it could slip your mind in seconds. You could second-guess yourself -- was that last number a three or a two? 

But let's say you break it down into clusters and give each cluster some meaning: 71 is the year of our independence, 66 you could remember as the famous US highway Route 66, and maybe 13 was the age you were when you fell off your bike and broke your teeth. Your brain codifies the number as shadhinota-route-broken teeth. 

Boom, the number comes back -- 716613 -- no confusion, no second guessing, no wondering if it was a 66 in the middle or a 68.  

My point here is quite simple. Remembering is much more than what brute force memorisation is thought to be: It is a truly creative act. 

Memory has been both glorified and vilified across education systems. In Bangladesh, we have seen students being pushed to the brink by having to memorise vast amounts of mind-numbing information. They pass their SSC and HSC but often have little to no context for what they have learned, and often find themselves unable to deal with real-world problems, or to compose original work, or to be analytical or critical. 

This is what is called "rote learning," and has been rightly criticised, so much so that the paradigm of Western education has turned almost entirely against it. But by downplaying the need to remember, and only encouraging "process-based" testing, take-home assignments, and open-book exams, they fail to fire the creativity that comes from trying to remember, and the creativity that ensues from remembering a lot of things.

Memory and creativity are bound together in a mutually reinforcing knot, and both must be encouraged. Memorisation is not the sole way to learn and to succeed in academics or in life, nor is it a complete soulless evil that kills our critical faculties as we parrot fact after fact while understanding nothing. 

Memory has been both glorified and vilified across education systems. In Bangladesh, we have seen students find themselves unable to deal with real-world problems, or to compose original work, or to be analytical or critical. 

As Bangladesh reforms its education system bit by bit, our teachers need to gain a more nuanced understanding of memory, and encourage it in a way that allows the minds of students to flourish. 

This means understanding and accepting that we remember things in context. The more we know, the more we are able to know from there. As such, every single thing we read or learn can help us in remembering anything else. We are long overdue for an overhaul: We need to hastily do away with our extremely outdated concept of "out-books" (books that are not textbooks, therefore are not allowed) or the idea that some knowledge or some interests are useless. 

The mind is a rich and diverse place, and telling a student to avoid books-like-this (or movies or high-quality TV) and to memorise books-like-that (textbooks only) is a good way to destroy curiosity, kill creativity, and yes, worsen a learner's memory. It is time our education system wised up, because we have been relying on a broken model for too long.

Abak Hussain is a journalist. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.