Moonwalking with Einstein

During the summer, I read the most fascinating book I have ever laid eyes upon. Joshua Foer, having been assigned an article on the US Memory Championships began taking a personal interest in the subject upon meeting a pair of European World Memory Champions. Long story short, Foer took apprenticeship to these to Grand Masters and ended up winning the US Memory Championship in 2006. This is non-fiction. While the book is incredibly interesting, and I must show nothing less than utter encouragement for whoever might be reading this to buy and enjoy the book, I would like to take this time and talk about Memory's place in society today. If you read the book, or see me tell you right know, the tricks for improving your memory are nothing more than that, tricks. Little more than a few techniques are needed to put yourself at a national level as far as memory goes. However, as simple as these tricks actually are, I had never even heard of them prior to reading Foer's book, and I am certain that you never have either. This is especially true for the younger generations, as older generations tended to have some form of education for memory, so I've been told. So why is it that, if these techniques are so simple, they aren't being implemented and stressed in school. I can speak from experience that in the little time since I've read the book and from the little effort I've put into improving my memory, studying vocabulary for french or biomes for Biology has never been easier. A large portion of institutionalized education is just memorization, making sure we know the facts that have been necessary to learn, and simple improvements to the way in which students study could make a huge difference on the way the American educations system performs. While I know little in the way in which the American educations committees and boards work, I can tell you that improvement is not too far away.