My current favorite TV show, “Unforgettable,” follows the life of fictional New York police officer Carrie Wells, who has perfect photographic memory. Carrie is the best cop in the city because she can remember minute details from every crime scene and every interrogation.
While watching this show, I was admiring her talent when I began to wonder: what if everyday people could develop memory as a learned skill?
While we can’t learn to have a photographic memory like Carrie’s, there are certainly ways in which we can actively strengthen our ability to memorize information.
The human brain’s neuroplasticity—that is, the way it reshapes itself—allows us alter the way in which we think. Even in old age, it is possible for a person to strengthen their capacity to think, learn new things, and remember.
Schools should devote more time to learning how to memorize, primarily because memory drives our ability to learn.
“Memory is essential to all learning, because it lets you store and retrieve the information that you learn,” according to McGill.
Since memory is so crucial to the learning process, students would greatly benefit from lessons on how to memorize— that is, how to learn better.
Classical education already uses this concept through teaching recitation. At the K-10 classical school where I interned, every grade level would stand up in front of the rest of the school and recite at least one poem or speech from memory. They did this activity four days a week.
First and second graders were adorable, reciting children’s poems like Shel Silverstein’s “Smart.” Older students showed the capacity to remember and recite several lines of poetry. They recited portions from poems like “The Raggedy Man,” which is about 80 lines long.
Each grade level didn’t limit their recitations to just one poem. Rather, each class had a binder full of tens of poems they had memorized throughout the course of the year.
The classical tradition values memorization not only for its ability to preserve information long-term, but also because memorization benefits the development of the human person as a whole.
In an article I wrote for the Hillsdale Collegian in 2021, professor of English Dwight Lindley explained that memorizing something makes it a part of who you are.
‘“At the end of the ‘Phaedrus,’ he actually criticizes books because he says that things you really know, you know inside yourself,” Lindley said. “You don’t need to have them on paper. If you have them on paper, do you really have them?”’
Poetry recitation, praised for its emphasis on beauty, is not the only way of building memory as a skill. Devoting class time to memory could also involve enrichment activities like solving mental puzzles or playing memory games.
Class time on memory would also require that specific memory systems be taught.
Some memory systems might involve tricks like mnemonic devices. Other systems might involve established techniques like creating a “mind palace,” which is a mental visualization of a place you are highly familiar with, allowing you to “put” facts in certain spots.
Every single day, every person needs to recall some information from their memory. We take for granted our ability to remember basic information—names, dates, or even items on a shopping list— but we all have moments when we desperately wish we could remember something that has slipped our mind.
Given that memory is something we use every day, both in school and in life post-graduation, memory should be a skill taught and practiced in classrooms, even if for only 15 minutes a day.
Though most of us won’t use our memories to stop criminals or solve mysteries like fictional police officer Carrie Wells, we should all strive to improve our memories to make the most of the information we have.