Rather than simply rehashing knowledge, let’s stick to something concrete. Let's start with a simple observation: even those who worked efficiently by making study sheets or mental maps have forgotten a significant portion of what they learned from middle school to high school. This article was inspired by a lecture given by Carlos Tinoco at the HEP of Vaud in Switzerland, titled: "School and Intellectual Giftedness: Understanding to Act." I watched this on YouTube on March 8, 2022. You can watch it here. It's in French.

Yes, this article has been a long time coming, due more to procrastination than anything else.

There was a particular passage at the end of the lecture that sparked my reflection on memory. Tinoco talks about what remains of what was learned in school after a few years, and he suggests the audience try this experiment, which I will share with you: ask students who were diligent and had good grades (now aged 35 to 40, since his audience was clearly in their thirties or forties), grab a stopwatch and ask them to tell you everything they know about the Middle Ages. Stop the timer when they finish.

And he concludes: you’ll see what remains. Nothing.

He then logically moves on to discuss the concept of desire.

Of course, this is not a groundbreaking discovery; we've all realized at some point that most of what we learned up until high school is now a faint memory. And that some individuals, particularly those who crammed or memorized everything last minute, remember even less than others.

Desire plays a crucial role in the memorization process. You need to want to learn—this is essential—but I believe this involves a more complex process than what Tinoco touched on. This doesn’t mean he hasn’t reflected on it in his thinking about memorization, just that he didn’t present it during his talk.

This raises two key questions in my view. The first, which he addressed, relates to the learning system and the format of school lessons. Teachers, regardless of their personalities, values, convictions, or unique life stories, may or may not possess the speaking skills or enthusiasm required to transmit their passion. However, they are also constrained by a system of standardized repetition, year after year. The second question, which is critical to memorization, involves emotion.

What truly embeds knowledge or memories in the brain is emotion.

Research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology often highlights the importance of emotion in the memorization process, showing a clear correlation between emotion and memory retention. This will be the subject of a dedicated article.

In the meantime, what explains students' difficulty in memorizing is the overall lack of emotion in the classroom during lessons.