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THE CURVE AND CONSEQUENCES OF FORGETTING
How many of our children would love to go to school for only an hour and a half a week? If we all had gone to school twice a week for 45 minutes and only looked at our class materials when we were in school; how educated would we be? How interested would we have been or be in school? Is 45 minutes of classwork twice a week enough to educate someone without extra studying? The answer is NO; look at the information below.
CURVE OF FORGETTING
The Curve of Forgetting describes how we retain or lose information that we have taken in. It’s based on a one-hour lecture.
On Day 1, at the beginning of the lecture, you enter class knowing nothing, or 0 percent, (where the curve starts at the baseline). At the end of the lecture you know 100 percent of what you know, however well you know it (where the curve rises to its highest point).
By Day 2, if you have done nothing with the information you learned in that lecture, didn’t think about it again, read it again, etc., you will have lost 50 percent to 80 percent of what you learned....
You can change the shape of the curve! A big signal to your brain to hold onto a specific chunk of information is if that information comes up again. When the same thing is repeated, your brain says, “Oh-there it is again, I better keep that.” When you are exposed to the same information repeatedly, it takes less and less time to “activate” the information in your long term memory, and it becomes easier for you to retrieve the information when you need it. (There is more to this article see website)
http://library.rpcc.edu/docs/CurveofForgetting-TRIO.pdf
How does this chart and article apply to us as Christians? Sometime I believe we as Christians and parents make our charts and our children’s charts look like the one above with our knowledge of God’s word. This is what happens when we don’t do our daily Bible studies and we don’t think about God’s word any other time but bible class. When we don’t do our daily Bible studies, we start out at little or no knowledge coming into each Bible class, this is even more noticeable in the children. When you start over at zero or little knowledge at each Bible class, what you end up with 0+0+0+0+0+0+0 = 0; no matter how many times you take them to bible class you still end up with little or zero knowledge of God’s word.
Do you know that we only spend 45 minutes, twice a week in Bible class and if that is the only time we read and study the Bible, we will forget. Besides God has put the responsibility of teaching our children on the parents not the Bible class teachers and while we as parents are teaching our children, we are learning and remembering ourselves. God knows that we will forget if we don’t continually study. That’s why he says in Deut. 6:5-7 “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and these words, which I command you this day shall be in your heart: and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.” The more time we spend in God’s word, the more knowledgeable and better children of His we will be. Do you know that there are 10,080 minutes in a week, of which 90 minutes (LESS THEN 1%) are spent in bible class and if that is the only time we and our children learn about God and his word, how much knowledge will we retain considering the curve of forgetting?
Why do we need to remember or have so much knowledge of God’s word? First of all, the more knowledge of His word we have the further we will understand Him and the closer our relationship can be with Him; faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, Romans 10:17. Also, this is what happens when we don’t have knowledge of God; Hosea says in chapter 4 verse 6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children!” As well as if we do not retain God in our knowledge, He will give us over to lies and a reprobate mind, Romans 1:20-32.
The picture does not look good if we forget or don’t have knowledge of God and His word, but we can change that curve of forgetting, if we do our daily Bible studies. First of all we will go into Bible class with knowledge and thus we are not starting off at zero understanding each class. Being exposed to the information a second and third time in Bible classes will help retain the information better, as the article says the more times we are exposed to the information the more our brains says keep this information. By doing our daily Bible studies we can make our chart of remembering look something like this. Individual’s charts will vary.
Knowledge alone will not get us to heaven, but it is a great start and foundation!
Jason Stannard
