The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

In the coming days, parents will engaging in the annual tradition known as school shopping. The school typically puts out lists to guide them in their efforts. This year, my daughter is leaving the elementary school and starting her educational career at the high school. On several occasions, she has expressed a degree of worry about the increased academic difficulty that will come with her new school setting. In response to her concern, I have started preparing myself to help her through studying in a more difficult setting. One of several steps I've taken is rereading Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer. The unique material covered in the book is useful enough for any student, which is why I wanted to review it and suggest that it belongs on the school supply list for any parent who wants to help their kid study for tests. Please note, that I am suggesting this for parents to read. It's not a book written for kids and some of the material is just not appropriate for kids. I'll explain why in my review.

Joshua Foer is a freelance journalist, who covered the world memory championships. Competitors demonstrated their prowess in various events, like memorizing long strings of random numbers that they heard only once, memorizing the order of a deck of cards in only a few minutes, reciting pages of poetry from memory after a single reading, and other seemingly superhuman feats of recollection. Foer assumed that the competitors were born with photographic memories, but later learned from interviewing finalists that they were all ordinary people who learned a handful of memory techniques and trained to use them at an extreme level. Inspired, Foer took up training and actually won the American memory championship the following year, setting a record for memorizing a deck of cards the fastest. Moonwalking with Einstein is the story of his training experience. While reading the book, I began experimenting with the various techniques he described. As a uniquely forgetful person, the prospect of learning to remember things more effectively was exciting.

The book itself is a mix of story, neuroscience, and memory techniques. Amongst the ideas I drew out, perhaps the most interesting and useful is the idea of memory palaces. A memory palace is a physical place you are very familiar with, where you can "place" items that will remind you of the things you store there. My experimenting with memory palaces began with my weekly grocery list. I chose a restaurant I frequent and could easily picture in my head. Then, for each of the list items, I placed something absurd in a different spot: in the parking lot, entrance, at the counter, and in other spots. The trick is to pick crazy things that can be associated with the item on the list. For example, one week I added raisins to the shopping list. To remember that, I pictured the California raisins from the 80s commercial doing their routine on the first stool at the counter. Foer explains that the location is important because human memory tends to work better when associated with physical locations. Mountains, rivers, boulders in fields, and other physical features/locations have historically been used as reminders of stories or events. The memory palace technique takes this feature of human memory and applies it in a way that allows you to remember all sorts of things. The use of silly/absurd images that are wholly out of place in the location makes them stand out and "stick" better in our memory. In addition to absurd images, "dirty" or sexualized images tend to stick well in the memory. Though the book doesn't go into graphic detail, the idea is referenced in a humorous manner throughout and is something that parents might not want their kids to read. I don't use graphic images to remember lists and recommend any parent who wants to teach their kids to use these sorts of memory techniques read the book themselves and only use the ideas they feel are appropriate for their kids.

You might be wondering if this actually works. I used memory palaces to memorize my grocery lists for months and never missed an item. In addition, while driving with my daughter one afternoon, I taught her our grocery list memory palace. We spent 5 minutes imagining the location and around 20 items. She was able to recite that list from memory for more than a month. She never failed to remember the whole list. I just stopped asking her to recite it.

There are other techniques listed in the book, which are easy to use. For example, people tend to more effectively recall ideas that are attached to more firmly embedded recollections. I realized that I discovered this concept as a kid. For years, I would use flash cards to study for tests. When I struggled to learn one card, I would put it next to other cards I knew well and repeatedly review those ideas together. This attached the new idea to an old established one. With more complex ideas, I would alter my flash cards as I became more and more familiar with them, adding details or other bits of information. This was basically the same concept: attaching new information to old in order to make it easier to recall. I also often used the silly/absurd memory devices. I would make up weird songs or funny phrases to help me remember. I still use some of them decades later when trying to remember facts or spellings.

Another thing I learned from Foer's book is that memory becomes more solidly embedded and easier to recall the more times you are asked to remember it. This led me to begin asking my kids questions immediately after they read new ideas while studying or repeating flash cards over and over so they would recall information and build better neurological connections. This is why modern textbooks often ask quiz questions at the end of sections in the book, to help the student build recollection.

These are just a few of the techniques and concepts from the book. There are quite a few others that I didn't see the need to learn to use at the moment. Regardless, these tools are ideal for any parent looking to help their child learn to study more effectively. None of them is particularly difficult and they can easily be learned and practiced to proficiency in a few hours.

Moonwalking with Einstein is available on Amazon. The audiobook is also on Libby, the Montana digital library app. If you aren't up for reading an entire book on the subject, there are "cliff notes" type summaries available, though I cannot attest to the quality of those books. There are also quite a few books on memory techniques available, though I can't attest to the quality of those either. Again, I wouldn't recommend this book for kids. However, as a parent who plans on studying with my child, the ideas in it are very valuable.