I don't doubt that your observed correlation is true, but I think you have cause and effect reversed. When I understand material, it's easy to copy it down in

I don't doubt that your observed correlation is true, but I think you have cause and effect reversed. When I understand material, it's easy to copy it down in its entirety because I can internalize and reproduce the meaning. In this case I'm with you that taking notes is a net positive, because it lets you exercise the concepts as you "copy" them. However, when I don't understand material, copying it down is much more challenging. I can't internalize the meaning so I have to resort to glyph reproduction which is a much heavier cognitive burden and much less instructive. This makes it even harder to keep up let alone untangle the conceptual debt that got me into the situation to begin with. In this case I think notes are a net negative. If you let people make the choice on their own, the kids who get the material but don't want to take notes suffer. If you force people to take notes, the people who are already having trouble suffer even more. Therefore I tend to favor giving (and receiving) choice. An exception would be online classes which have pause buttons that conveniently bypass the tradeoff.