The Power of Repetition

After leaving school and starting work, I noticed that much of what I learned before high school is still conceptually clear, while some of what I learned at university is none too solid.

Thinking about it, the biggest reason is probably that university material carries far more information than high school material while the total hours are shorter, and on top of that I had less clear a goal than in high school, so without direction I worked less hard, and never went through the material more than a couple of times. Whereas that little bit of high school knowledge had been practiced over and over.

I do think that intensity of drilling in high school is excessive for learning itself; it’s an arms race whose whole purpose is to sort people into tiers for university admission. But things tend to swing from one extreme to the other: sickened by repetitive practice, people arrive at university and loathe all practice. Practice with immediate feedback, and a suitable amount of repetition, is an effective way to build permanent concepts; practice has shown it works, and it agrees with what neuroscience finds.

We can study all sorts of learning methods and look for time-saving shortcuts, but method is usually not the most important thing. What matters most are the truths that have been repeated to death — that you have to keep at it, that you have to practice repeatedly. Only on top of those does it make sense to talk about method.

In fact understanding grows as you age, and if you dig deep in one field so that a knowledge system is already built, new knowledge needs fewer repetitions. But all of that rests on the earlier knowledge being solid.

So there’s no room for self-deception in learning; whatever you skipped will be repaid in this life. Of course the sooner you know this the better — though when you have no goal in life, knowing it does you little good.