I Used to Know Things...

I have a favourite study technique. I refer to it as Learning via Osmosis. LVO usually involves placing a text book under my head while I close my eyes and lie in the sunshine. It was a technique I discovered in high school and have refined over the years. And now I find that years of referring to osmosis as a technique for study, I no longer quite remember what osmosis really is, except of course that what I’m doing has nothing to do with osmosis because osmosis requires water and a semi-permeable membrane, whatever that is. Also, it isn’t about the transfer of information.

Back in the day, when I was at school in my kilt, lying in the grass, beside the school pool (the water that made Learning via Osmosis possible), with one book under my head and another balanced over my face, I knew what was osmosis actually was. I also knew how it differed from that other thing, that thing that I don’t recall, but was perhaps called diffusion. I have, just now, lowered myself to the level of someone who checks Wikipedia in order to rediscover the general knowledge they already knew, and can confirm that yes, diffusion was the word I was looking for. I used to know things. All sorts of things. About the working out of the hypotenuse of a triangle. I knew that. And working out the sizes of angles in various geometric shapes. I could do that. I knew about how cells divided, about mitosis and meiosis and which was which, and if I looked at pictures of these processes taking place I could tell you which was which, but I certainly couldn’t now.

I feel that more than anything I need to ask, where did the knowledge go? Has it left me, or is it just buried? If I started reading something about gametes and cell reproduction, would that part of my brain kick back in to gear? Or did that information leave me and become replaced with Peep Bo’s line of So Please You Sir We much Regret, a harmony I found tricksy at the time and went over so many times that when I came to learning Pitti Sing’s part ten years later, although I’d not looked at the music once in all those years, I found it was Peep Bo’s harmony and hers alone that my brain wanted my mouth to sing. Why had I retained a piece of music I hadn’t needed to sing for ten years? Why is it that the only French phrases I know (aside from the one in Lady Marmalade) are about chocolate, Je voudrais un chocolat chaud,(well, I would) le chocolat me regarde! (seriously it is, and it wants me to eat it!), yet I couldn’t ask for directions nor can I remember how to ask for train tickets. Like wise my patchy German allows me to ask someone the ever important question, bist du eine orange, but not much else.

If this is the outcome of thirteen years of school education, its tempting to ask what the point was. Why did I need to learn that stuff about osmosis and gametes and geometric proofs? Obviously, that knowledge has not been at the front of my brain for some time, and I am, for the most part a well balanced, happy and capable adult, so did it ever need to be at the front of my brain. Did I need to spend all those hours learning those things, only to forget them? But such a sentiment goes against my inherent love for learning and life long education. I place huge value on education and firmly believe that all people should have access to a wide and varied education as it helps us grow and develop and opens possibilities. I’m not for a minute suggesting that isn’t the case, I just wonder why I can’t retain endless bits of information. I worked hard at learning things, and they made sense to me, and now that knowledge is gone. I find it disturbing that once I understood something of valencies, plant and animal biology, French grammar, but that over time I let those abilities go.

While I may have had to let go of the information I wasn’t using in order to reduce clutter and make brain space available for more relevant skills, memories and theories, it just doesn’t seem fair, or even right, for knowledge to be transitory.