Reviews for Memory

The average rating for Memory based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-11-19 00:00:00 Mark Gonzalez I rarely agree with educational theorists, finding their ideas utopian and impossible to implement in real world schools with real students. To some extent this book is no different. It sketches an ideal situation where both teacher and students are happily engaged in mutual learning. But even though that ideal seems unattainable (which the authors concede, by the way) the underlying premises are very true and extremely useful. Way too much teaching is teaching to the test, which is there to provide grades and make the educational process measurable. Caine reasons that that situation is not at all conducive to learning, in fact hampers most students. Instead all teaching should be meaningful, contextual, emotional. It should help students to make sense of the world and themselves in an interesting and, indeed, profoundly meaningful way. All of that helps the human brain to really learn, instead of simply memorising. The authors go quite some way in giving examples of how this can be achieved, but it is there that I found the book lacking (hence only 4 stars). Even with 20+ years of teaching experience I'm having a hard time translating the ideas, concepts and examples to my own classroom. At some point the book gets a little too new-agey for me with references to transcendental meditation and mystic contemplation, but those are only minor details in a book that is otherwise very well researched, easy to understand and extremely useful to re-evaluate one's views of teaching and learning.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-13 00:00:00 Aaron DembskiBowden Finally, a brain based book that acknowledges experiences trump routine. It also offers tangible ways to implement theory to create a brain-based school.