What on earth did I learn in school?

I have been wondering, lately, what the heck it was I actually learned in school. For the entirety of elementary school I'm convinced I hardly learned a thing, because my dad showed me math concepts before we were taught them in school, and I was usually reading at a higher level than we were in class. I learned some guff about Christopher Columbus, which, it transpired, was false; I learned the state flower, bird, stone, etc (always so important in everyday life); and I made some pitiful dioramas out of shoeboxes and too much paste.

I recall a few things from middle and high school. I definitely learned some French, and then there's the random stuff still floating around in there: Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria; igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary; John Wilkes Booth; 6 x 10^23. There's more, but most of it's similarly disconnected. Not much to show for all those years, is it?

I once read that the amazing thing about the human brain is its capacity to forget. You don't need to remember that the car in front of you on the way home from the store was red, or what you paid to get your oil changed 10 years ago, or the names of the characters on a sitcom you idly watched one evening. If we remembered everything, we'd never be able to call up the important stuff. The important data would be buried under a mound of useless trivia. So, yes, I can see that the brain has a wonderful ability to forget.

I don't really know how memory works, but I have a vague idea. You learn some random bit of information somewhere, and file it away in a little cluster of neurons someplace in your brain. If it fits into one of your interests or your previous knowledge, you'll probably ponder it a bit, thinking "That reminds me of..." or "So that explains why..." or whatever. That process presumably links up this new data within the larger web of your memory and knowledge. But if the bit of data doesn't relate to anything and doesn't interest you, or doesn't inform your view of how the world works in some way, it fades into oblivion. A few days or weeks later, your brain can't locate that bit of data, because it isn't connected to anything; there is no way to mentally get back to that data again.

I assume the brain has an optimal way of interweaving knowledge so that we remember it, provided, of course, that we are learning in a natural way. Interfere with learning by forced memorization, and I suspect that the brain doesn't link up to the new information quite so well. Just like I trust that my body can give birth naturally (even to an 11 pound 3 ounce baby, as I found out with T.), and that breastmilk is best, and that I don't want to interfere with my children's immune system development, neither do I want to interfere with the natural process of assimilating new information.

The reason I don't recall any history is that these bits of data stuck around only long enough to be recalled during tests. Every chapter focused on something totally new, and was filled with names, places, and dates which were not really relevant to the overall gist or narrative, and we were never taught history in terms of its relevance to modern times. History repeats itself, they say, but they don't show you how in school, they don't teach you about the pendulum between fascism and individualism, or corporatism and workers' rights. Somehow, by repetition and mnemonics, you can get disconnected data to stick around for a while-- but only for a short while.

Better to learn about just a few eras or events in history, and know them really well because you're interested, than to memorize and then forget the set of facts which someone else has decided is important. When a child is interested, they'll read about something in more than one place, and come upon the same idea or data several times over in slightly different contexts. It's an axiom among homeschoolers that everything seems to relate to everything else, and you can start a discussion about Ren and Stimpy and get to Darwin somehow. When you learn this way, webs are formed, and the information is therefore remembered. In school you just get data in a single sentence in a book, much of the time. You get it in one context only, without anyone pointing out its relevance (you learn it because you'll be tested on it). The information sits in a little neural cluster by itself until your brain can no longer find it again.

And that's why I can't remember a thing I learned in school.