Skip to content

The drawers in the head

    To learn successfully, you have to understand how the brain works. For example, when you learn a mathematical formula by just looking at it, it gets put into a drawer somewhere in your head. But this drawer is in a huge room full of cabinets with countless drawers. If the math teacher asks for the formula, the brain has to search for it in all these drawers and often does not find it at all. How could it, with so many drawers?

    But one has the possibility to label the drawer by using all senses while learning. If you learn the same formula by copying it a few times, saying it out loud, and painting it colorfully, then the drawer with the formula in it gets a label that says “math formula.” When the teacher then asks about it, the brain can quickly find the one labeled “math formula” among all the drawers.