{"id":482,"date":"2019-08-24T09:01:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T14:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=482"},"modified":"2023-05-06T10:13:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-06T15:13:09","slug":"the-flow-of-thought-part-2-the-joy-of-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2019\/08\/24\/the-flow-of-thought-part-2-the-joy-of-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flow of Thought, Part 2: The Joy of Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my last article “The Flow of Thought, Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness’ Sake”<\/a> I drew a connection between Aristotle\u2019s view that happiness is the chief goal of education and the findings of modern positive psychology. In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi\u2019s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience<\/em>, he reports his findings that people report being most happy when in a state of flow<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Buy through the EdRen Bookstore<\/a>!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

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Flow is his term for the experience of focused effort at some worthwhile pursuit at a level of challenge commensurate with one\u2019s skills. Whether a hobby, work or a meaningful conversation, the experience of flow<\/a> is immensely rewarding, but it requires full engagement of one\u2019s consciousness and a high level of what Csikszentmihalyi calls \u201cpsychic energy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s because of this requirement that we too often engage in passive entertainment, like TV watching, and less meaningful experiences. We are too tired. And instead of resting fully, we try to avoid the disordered chaos of our untrained minds (no doubt a result of the Fall) by resorting to these attention grabbers and timewasters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I mentioned, our psychologist\u2019s findings mirror Aristotle\u2019s claim that the life of virtue, and more specifically the theoretic life, is the happy life. Human flourishing is found in a life of active striving after excellence, in whatever domain surely, but most of all in contemplative pursuits. In his chapter on the Flow of Thought our psychologist breaks down the many paths of the contemplative life, or how to achieve flow<\/a> in thought, and in so doing provides more arguments for the value of a classical education<\/a> per page than many of the classical education movement’s\u00a0best-sellers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this article we\u2019re exploring the joy of memory<\/strong> in order to discover how training the memory can contribute to a happy life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Csikszentmihalyi begins by explaining why remembering something is in itself a pleasurable activity: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRemembering is enjoyable because it entails fulfilling a goal and so brings order to consciousness. We all know the little spark of satisfaction that comes when we remember where we put the car keys, or any other object that has been temporarily misplaced.\u201d (121) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Even the smallest acts of memory sparkle of the possibility of the flow state, since a goal is being reached. You\u2019ll remember his claim that disorder naturally clouds our consciousness as problem-seeking creatures, and so the memory of some stable fact or idea brings a sort of order to our inner world. And if this is true of remembering where we put the car keys, how much more the important events of our life, the histories of our culture<\/a>, or the important truths that give our lives meaning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debunking the Attack on Memory <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly our psychologist takes on the educational establishment\u2019s attack on \u201crote memory.\u201d He speaks nostalgically of how his <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cgrandfather at seventy could still recall passages from the three thousand lines of the Iliad he had to learn by heart in Greek to graduate from high school. Whenever he did so, a look of pride settled on his features, as his unfocused eyes ranged over the horizon. With each unfolding cadence, his mind returned to the years of his youth. The words evoked experiences he had had when he first learned them; remembering poetry was for him a form of time travel.\u201d (123) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For his grandfather remembering these lines is both a source of pride and \u201ca form of time travel\u201d providing a re-emergence of his youthful experiences. We can suppose that this sort of experience gave his grandfather a stability and a richness that those of us who haven\u2019t attained such feats of memory might lack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our psychologist goes on to debunk the modern attack on memory with characteristic charity and grace: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut for a person who has nothing to remember, life can become severely impoverished. This possibility was completely overlooked by educational reformers early in this century, who, armed with research results, proved that \u2018rote learning\u2019 was not an efficient way to store and acquire information. As a result of their efforts, rote learning was phased out of the schools. The reformers would have had justification, if the point of remembering was simply to solve practical problems. But if control of consciousness is judged to be at least as important as the ability to get things done, then learning complex patterns of information by heart is by no means a waste of effort. A mind with some stable content to it is much richer than one without.\u201d (123) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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His argument turns on the pragmatism of modern education, as if the ability to solve practical problems were the only point of education. One can hear John Dewey\u2019s claims in the background, as he argued against traditional methods on the basis of his evolutionary mindset. For him solving practical human problems was the end-all be-all of life. Yet if we view life broadly enough, controlling consciousness should be a valuable enough goal for even the most ardent Deweyan, especially given how many problems are caused by the internal disorder of our minds. Enter the modern epidemics of anxiety and depression, as simple examples of this fact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even without this last point, modern learning science has shown just how valuable having a mind full of data is for problem solving. As the authors of Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>explain, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRepeated retrieval [of something from memory] not only makes memories more durable but produces knowledge that can be retrieved more readily, in more varied settings, and applied to a wider variety of problems.\u201d (43) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Of course, that doesn\u2019t absolve us of the perennial question of what knowledge and therefore what subjects and books are most important or valuable to be learned and remembered at any particular time. But it does debunk the assault on \u201crote learning\u201d as simply not useful. And the objection that memorized material must be understood by the children (to some degree) in order to be useful is not to the point. Nobody, so far as I am aware, is advocating that children memorize material that they have no understanding of, even if that accidentally still happens sometimes in practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet these reflections are far afield from our psychologist\u2019s primary point, which is that the cultivation of memory allows a person to enter the flow<\/a> of thought and thereby attain a joy that is independent of one\u2019s circumstances. As he explains, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA person who can remember stories, poems, lyrics of songs, baseball statistics, chemical formulas, mathematical operations, historical dates, biblical passages, and wise quotations has many advantages over one who has not cultivated such a skill. The consciousness of such a person is independent of the order that may or may not be provided by the environment\u2026. She can always amuse herself, and find meaning in the contents of her mind. While others need external stimulation\u2014television, reading, conversation, or drugs\u2014to keep their minds from drifting into chaos, the person whose memory is stocked with patterns of information is autonomous and self-contained.\u201d (123-4) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Christians we might think of the stories of martyrs and those imprisoned for their faith, even in recent times, like Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Christian minister imprisoned under the Soviet Union. In his book With God in Solitary Confinement<\/em> Wurmbrand explains how he survived the ordeal with his sanity intact by sleeping during the day and first composing, then preaching a new sermon each night. In so doing he developed (or already had the gift of) an extraordinary memory. He claimed to be able to recall more than 350 of the sermons he composed in this way after the ordeal, some of which he later recorded in his book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Setting himself such a task was without doubt a divinely inspired mission and we have no reason to suspect anything other than that he was uplifted by the Holy Spirit in a remarkable way. But it\u2019s interesting to notice how his chosen activity mimics our psychologist\u2019s secular recommendations for attaining a flow of thought independent of one\u2019s environment. Wurmbrand found a divinely-ordained task\u2014he was called as a preacher after all\u2014that he could practice with focused effort utilizing the whole range of his mental abilities. Practicing this task kept him occupied in joyful flow<\/a>, improving his preaching skills and developing his prodigious memory. And he did this while in the otherwise torturous state of solitary confinement, with not a sound, not a person, not a thing to amuse him or relieve the pain of boredom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of such an example of the joy of memory it\u2019s frankly pitiful that our culture considers rote memorization to constitute painful boredom for kids, who need to be relieved by frequent entertaining pop-culture references, videos or their own smart phones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aside:<\/em> Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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