You might have seen this guy, he was a guest on a lot of shows after he won the US Memory Championship earlier this year.

Memory training is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I really think that schools should have one mandatory class every year devoted to it. Of course, it’ll never happen… any kid who masters even the basics of a memory systems has a killer advantage in our current school system, because more than 95% of testing simply checks whether you can regurgitate facts on command. And can you imagine what would happen if every kid could do that, perfectly, almost every time?! Schools would have to re-work their system to actually test for understanding! The horror!

In the mean time, a few parents will quietly continue to teach their kids how to use memory systems at home. Those kids will be fully capable of bringing home A+ report cards on almost any subject with a minimum of effort, while equally intelligent classmates will put in several times more work and pull lower grades for it.

I detest inefficiency. Schools could be so much more than just government-run part-time babysitters-slash-prisons. If the goal is learning, start by teaching the kids how to learn efficiently! If it’s just keeping them out of trouble for a few hours each day, be honest and admit that… and continue to watch helplessly as cultures that haven’t screwed up their own education systems happily take the wealth and power that you’re handing over to them.