Old-Fashioned Lessons: Drills

Fun, huh? Not! But, oh, so important!

Drills are part of memorization. For the Grammar stage of subjects such as playing musical instruments and sports, drills are physical rather than mental or verbal. Drills, once again, form neural pathways. During the Olympics several years ago, they put up a quote: "An amateur practices until he gets it right; a professional practices until he can't get it wrong."

Just as you don't have to think when you pick up a pencil, by physically or mentally drilling you get to where you don't have to think about what you are doing. The more neural pathways are formed, the more capability a person of any age will have.

I started learning my first instrument, the flute, at age 9. I  began my second, the piano, at age 10. Visiting my aunt at age 11, I dabbled with her recorder, which she then gave me. I sprained my pinky finger in gym when I was 12, so I picked up my mother's mandolin and was playing the theme to Romeo and Juliet by the end of the evening. My parent brought me home a mountain dulcimer from a vacation they took to the Appalachians when I was 18 and I play it regularly in church. I then went to college and got a degree in Music Education, learning eleven more instruments.

Here's the thing: I don't believe I had more than a little bit of talent. I had a lot of friends at school who played far better than I did. My college advisor complimented me on how easily I picked up instruments to my junior high supervising teacher. The supervising teacher didn't think I deserved much credit! Simply learning one instrument taught me how to learn the next and each instrument forged new neural pathways, making each subsequent instrument that much easier to learn.

The same thing has been documented in learning new languages.Even just in the skills of housework, learning to clean one type of surface teaches you skills that transfer to other surfaces, both visually -- what does clean look like? -- and  physically -- what does the surface feel like when dirty or clean and what movements are used to clean? Drilling information makes it yours so you don't have to count on your fingers to know what 7 X 8 equals.

A friend's husband was deployed from the National Guard to Afghanistan in September. He would be returning the following September, but his unit didn't leave the country until March! What were they doing all that time? Drilling! They were training for 6 months of the time that they were paid to be full-time soldiers. Drilling would get them to the point that they responded automatically in crisis situations when they didn't have time to think.

Our family does a Doctrinal Drill that is part of the Bible Lessons from Christ-Centered Curriculum for Early Childhood. Along with reading through the major events of the Bible, they learn a catechism that teaches them over 70 verses in support of the main doctrines of the church and for application to life. Since this is our family Bible time, every child in the family studies it from age 2 to when they graduate high school. The drill has made those verses a solid block in their memories. In life situations or in family discussions, we'll ask them what the Bible says about this (whatever it is) and it is wonderful how often they will pluck a verse out of their Doctrinal Drill and apply it perfectly. Awana Clubs do this as well, with review built into every level, and many verses expanded in each succeeding book.

Children (and adults!) complain about drills. But, to make any skill go from short-term, temporary, fluid, electrical memory to long-term, concrete, crystalline, chemical memory requires hundreds of repetitions. No fun, but so helpful!

Old-Fashioned Lessons -- Memorizing

How boring!

Who likes to memorize? And, everyone always talks about how hard it is. But, if you read Little House on the Prairie books or Tom Sawyer or Elsie Dinsmore, that was what they did. Every lesson was memorized. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't actually write a single thing until she was sixteen years old. It wasn't required.

The basis of Western education for over a thousand years was the Trivium, meaning, where three roads meet. Those consisted of the the Grammar (Memorizing), the Dialectic (Logic) and Rhetoric (Speaking or teaching). We are going to focus on the foundation: Grammar.

Whether it is a child or a subject, if you skip the Grammar/Memorizing skills and principles, you will never progress beyond it. Children are wired to be champion memorizers from before age 5 to about age 11. But, if they practice memorizing a lot, their brain actually forms more connections so that they memorize even better! Every subject has its Grammar, or foundation principles and you cannot proceed in that subject unless you have learned them.

I once worked with a 10 year old for three weeks on memorizing a single verse in Awana. She ought to have been at the tail end of the Grammar phase of development, about to start the Dialectic/Logic phase. But, not having learned to memorize at a young age (thank you, public schools), the synaptic pathways had not been formed and she was almost incapable of memorizing. She was not prepared to learn any kind of logic.

Dorothy Sayers, friend and fellow teacher of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, in her essay, "Discovering the Lost Tools of Learning," advises that you have your 6-12 year olds memorize.

Anything.

Bible verses, nursery rhymes, dinosaur names, the Periodic Table of Elements, the Gettysburg Address, the days of the week, anything. It forges pathways in the brain and makes learning Dialectic/Logic and Rhetoric/Teaching possible.