DJ Strouse

From the mouth of the professor to the working memory of students to notebooks not to be read again; this is the path of information in Western education.

Closing the Notebooks…
I had the great pleasure to listen to a fascinating lecture by a Sanskrit scholar on the shruti technique used by their monks to quickly learn thousands of chants and verses in childhood and beyond. The goal, however, is not only memory, but full comprehension of the underlying philosophy. Sanskrit philosophy is historically an oral tradition, passed from teacher to student verbally and for millenia was not written down. Even today, in monasteries such as the one in which the yogi I listened to tonight was raised, the chief form of information transfer is verbal. But here is the key element: students aren’t allowed to take notes during lectures.

Opening the Ears…
The philosophy behind this approach is simple and effective. A student encountering new material does not have enough attentional faculties to attend to their ears, their pen, and the ideas all at the same time. Something must give and, in my experience (and I suspect those of many other students), it is the comprehension.

Freeing the Mind’s Eye…
I gave this a shot during the yogi’s lecture tonight and the results were fascinating. By focusing my visual attention fully on the yogi and avoiding the distractions of note-taking, I found my visual faculties freed for more creative thinking. I could focus on the lecture with my ears but let my visual mind wander and explore the implications.

And Exercising the Creative Pen
Of course, note-taking is not entirely useless. It’s an excellent exercise in recollection. A professor-mentor of mine recently mentioned a grad student he had once known who sat in his lectures and never cracked a notebook or text. He simply focused intently and completely on the issues presented, asking questions when he needed, but never touching a pen or diverting attention to the written word. Instead, he would reproduce entirely the content of the lecture once he returned home, re-deriving equations, re-articulating concepts in his own words, and re-drawing diagrams that helped elucidate the material to him. That student turned out to be one of the most intelligent and creative students my professor had ever had. This suggestion was again reiterated to me tonight as an integral part of the shruti tradition of oral learning.

I’ll be giving this a shot in my classes over the last week and a half of the spring semester. If anyone else is interested in seeing how this form of learning works with them and their lines of study, I’d certainly be interested in hearing the results.

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