Children are learning machines. They do it faster than adults, and they could be retaining everything. The reason no one retains things from school is because t

Children are learning machines. They do it faster than adults, and they could be retaining everything. The reason no one retains things from school is because there’s no effort put into long-term retention. There’s no effort put into much of anything outside of memorization. Math is memorizing formulas, French is memorizing vocabulary, English is memorizing plots and literary devices. The best classes are the ones that the teacher asks for synthesizing something that is not explicitly given. Take some base knowledge and ask people to use it to make something new, and the learning is way more effective. Language learning works on this principle, thus why “immersion” is the best learning method. It forces you to speak. Math is like this too, playing around with the formulas and learning to come up with new ones reinforces the principles. Writing is far more effective at teaching students to read than just reading is. Creative writing in the same style or using the same devices as a book will internalize them. Learning is about synthesis, and it’s vanishingly rare in the education system.