The default is forgetting

If I visited a classroom today, no matter what level in the educational bulge (1-12) I visited, I would hear and see that reinforcement is a well-liked idea.   It would appear that good pedagogy includes introducing an idea and repeating it until all of the 20-30  students have at least heard it a minimum of 10 times, whether or not the concept is grasped.  Teachers wait for the golden mean to happen, that is, they wait until the middle number of students, 10-15, have demonstrated that by the 10th repetition of the concept they can perform the task.  A really good teacher will have all or nearly all students demonstrating understanding by the 10th time.

I cannot quit laughing at this notion.  Principle number 2 is all about the way that a synapse is formed.  Gary Lynch in California worked for nearly his whole 30 year career in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century trying to actually see a memory being formed.  He finally did.  And, then, he saw it replicated but not as many times as he expected.  After all his trials of getting the cells to  remember something he realized that the brain is programmed to take in what is necessary for reaction and survival, but to remember only what is worth remembering.  It doesn't really remember electrical impulses carrying information until the information is notable.

So, when I visit a classroom and see students with a vacant stare after a concept has been introduced, I know that the information being transmitted is not really notable; it doesn't have worth.  Even after the 10th time, if an idea has no worth to someone, it will not form a synapse with other related information.  What is more, Lynch found that impulses lit up (showing the remembrance) for different lengths of time, mostly measured in milliseconds.  The shortest impulses didn't last long enough to form connections to other dendrites.  So, even if a student showed understanding for one sitting, it is common only to show it temporarily, not for long term understanding.  Those memories are for information that has worth.

The real job of a teacher seems like it should be to show worth for the information dispensed.  Otherwise, it would appear that ease of forming ideas is rather a lost cause.  Reinforcement (repetition) doesn't have a place in memory formation.  Perhaps it does in memory storage, but the last word is not in on that yet.

I do see a problem for the schools knowing how memory is formed.  What is notable is many times linked to what is in a person's background, what is of value or interest, or what contains motivation for a particular individual.  I'm not sure a teacher has that varied a bag of tricks.  Even if a teacher does, I am certain a teacher doesn't have the time for making information notable to such a varied number of students (making one piece of information notable for someone, times 20 or times 30, times the number of concepts to teach in a day's time).

There's a reason one size does not fit all.