Having previously shared my concerns with the game-playing and argle-bargle endemic to social science, I found Ramirez’s precise rendering of laboratory science reassuring. From his (wince-inducing) descriptions of performing brain surgery on mice to his effortless summations of a century’s worth of brain science, the attention to detail stands out. For someone used to education research rife with hand-waving and barely concealed agendas, I can see why the methodical discipline imposed by laboratory science is so appealing.
Ramirez emphasizes the astonishing malleability of memory, noting, “Whatever is remembered gets changed . . . memories are rebuilt each time they are called upon.” As an example, he points to 9/11, a day firmly etched into the minds of most Americans born before 1995. We can recall where we were when we heard the news, what we were doing, and watching footage and updates for hours on end. Ramirez notes that such memories are sticky—but tricky:
We’d easily and confidently describe, for instance, watching news outlets replay footage of the first and second plane hitting the World Trade Center. The problem, however, is that the footage of the first plane hitting the North Tower wasn’t readily available until the next day; we installed that new detail into our memories of the day before.
Most relevant for those in education are the implications of this research for our familiar debates about pedagogy and classroom practice. In education today, we talk a lot about cognitive load but not much about the fluidity of memory. Are there strategies that might help students master knowledge in ways that leave them less susceptible to manipulation? Memories encode emotion, which means that positive or negative experiences become part of our very being. That makes K–12 classrooms critical in helping students encode a positive emotional response to reading, learning, and engaging with peers. That would seem to offer a powerful bit of common ground for those focused on rigor and those concerned about student engagement.
