How we remember

I heard an interesting theory a few weeks ago that I want to share here. In my own experience I find it to be true and if it is then we should probably rethink how we teach our kids. The idea is this: when you are in your early teens you have the largest amount of brain cells that you will ever have. It is not just your brain cells are dying when you are old or when you drink them to oblivion. They are already dying when you are in high school. As a result you have the most retention and most vivid understanding of what you are interested in those years. At every point after that learning and retaining new information grows more and more difficult.


I’ve certainly have found this to be the case with me, especially in what I would consider absolutely trivial subjects. I can probably discuss the world of professional wrestling in the late 80’s to a degree of detail that is staggering. I think I can even recall entire cards of Saturday Nights Main Event. I could probably recall entire brackets of the NCAA tournament from that time. I can tell you every detail in the Hitchhiker’s Guide stories and don’t even get me started on Monty Python sketches. All of this is still in my head today though if you asked me about details regarding the last book I read or the last movie I’ve seen I would probably struggle greatly.

This might also explain why no matter how old I seem to get I still get drawn back into high school mode. I know that since the rise of Facebook there has been this massive rise in relationships ending due to people hooking up with old high school flames that they find online. Maybe it is because those moments occur when our minds are at their most fertile that they take on a much greater importance than they really deserve. Those memories are vivid decades later so we interpret that as being an indication of their worth. We end up being bogged down by these memories that our brains hold on to until the end.

Where I really think this is important is in education, though. I was lucky enough to be a studious kid which while not the best for me socially had me studying a lot of varied subjects at a time where that data would stick in my mind. Studying math and science as a kid made becoming an engineer a much easier task. My interest in history and literature at the time gave me a foundation in those subjects that stays with me. Somehow we have to determine how to create an environment in which children are brought up to focus on the important subjects at a time when their minds seem to be everywhere else. That is a challenge.