Mental note to self for Christmas 2011

Dear Ken

You won’t read this until next Christmas, so here are a few things you will have forgotten by then. I know this because you forget them every year:

1)      Wrapping the gifts you’ve just spent far too much money on, do not take “just an hour” to wrap the night before. You will be up until way past midnight wrapping away with a bad back, cursing yourself for not remembering this from last time.

2)      Buy some more tape before you want to do the wrapping. The roll of sticky tape you have had for most of the year that “should be adequate” will have been used by your daughter just hours beforehand for some unmentioned project that involves enough sticky tape to everything in the house to everything else.

3)      That little scrap of wrapping paper you think will just cover that gift? It won’t. Don’t even try it. You will save 10 minutes of your life not attempting mathematic calculations to make it fit somehow.

4)      The kids will not be asleep at their normal time on Christmas Eve just because they have run around like mad things all day with great excitement. Santa will not be able to visit their room and deliver the stocking gifts before around 2 in the morning. It’s ok. The presents probably won’t be wrapped much before that anyway.

5)      Despite the fact you hate it, don’t attempt to delete Band Aid from your music collection. The wife will insist you play it and “how can it possibly be Christmas without it?”

6)      The kids are just not going to appreciate you playing that Neil Diamond album all through Christmas no matter how you go misty-eyed and tell them what an important part of your childhood his music was at Christmas. You are still going to play it though.

7)      You never get tired of watching Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. It must be the original Muppets version, of course.

8)      This year, you can’t take that cool, fancy science toy thingy that one of your kids got and tell them “Oh it needs an adult to help you with this. I’ll take it to keep it safe and we’ll do it together later in the week”. You won’t. A year later, it will remain on your shelf untouched, no matter how much they have begged for it through that time.

9)      You don’t need a big carrot for Rudolph. He really just does not like carrots that much and he will feel quite sick by the end of chomping away at it leaving the end of it as evidence to the kids that “Santa has been here”. You don’t want him to feel sick on Christmas day do you? You know he’ll be grumpy…

10)   In 2011 the kids are probably still too small to be able to watch Die Hard on Christmas Eve despite how cool the last song is. Singing Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow raucously is not a good enough reason to let them see gratuitous violence and there are just too many “F words” to get away with it. Yet.

Merry Christmas old boy. Try to remember to enjoy it…

Christmas Gifts

Dedicated to my father and all those who have passed through my life for a season.

Today at LAMB school in Bangladesh, I had to give an assembly looking at Christmas and this gave me an opportunity to be thinking about what this seasonal festivity means to me as a foreigner abroad. At the same time, after the assembly, we said goodbye to two students who have been with us for most of their lives, I think. The boy, Mueed, I don’t know every well – incredibly he’s one of the few that I haven’t taught here! The girl, Anumita, I’ve always taught. I know her very well and I am really sad that she is leaving.

Anu is going to join the Bangladeshi school over the road from us. This may seem an odd move considering that the education at LAMB is undoubtedly good. You may be thinking, if there is a Bangladeshi school very close by, why have an English Medium school teaching O levels and English National Curriculum syllabus at all? What is the point of teaching a foreign system?

It is a good point and one, I’m rather glad to say, I was not involved with when decisions about the school were made. I came in with the knowledge that O levels had been decided upon and the teaching had already begun so I just slotted into a system that was already there. Likewise, the National Curriculum had been followed for years, long before I came. I have no preference myself.

Nevertheless, the school was set up to be an alternative – in almost everyway – to the national system and to give options to students and their parents that they would not otherwise have had. This is important when we live in an environment where head teachers can still demand bribes to take on students, where teachers (and heads) can beat whole classes of kids and get away with it because the school has to give a ‘Transfer Certificate’ if a child wants to go to another school. If you take your child out of school because they beat her you will not get that certificate. Or where teaching is deliberately poor so that parents are forced to pay for private teachers to teach the subject after school in their homes – often the same teacher who was teaching poorly in the class! This is the expected way that teachers earn a substantial part of their income. For this reason, all teachers at LAMB are forbidden to teach privately.

Not all schools are as bad as this, of course, and many children leave LAMB and go to other schools where they are perfectly happy. We see many kids come into the school (it has a large waiting list of students who wish to join) and we see many leave. So why am I sad about Anu?

I think, more than anything else, it is because I have formed a relationship with her over the years, as I have with all my students. I took so long to decide to come to Bangladesh because of this kind of attachment. I loved the company of all the students I taught in Whitehaven, England and cared about what would happen to their education if I left. Now, here, I think the same when I see a student leave. What will happen to their education, their life, their hope, their future when they leave here? I can’t help but worry and feel sad that they have slipped away. I feel like I have got it wrong in some way.

So then, I have to keep reminding myself why LAMB school is here. We provide an alternative to the national system. It is right that parents exercise that right to opt in or out. Our job is to make sure students are prepared for either option. It would not be right if we somehow ‘trapped’ parents into our system in just the same way they can be trapped in the national one. Still, I can’t help but feel I must have got it wrong if someone felt they wanted to exercise that freedom.

Thankfully, Christmas has come at just the right time to help me find some kind of an answer to my anguish.

As a Christian school we are preparing for Borodin and remembering the gift given us in the form of Jesus as a child. The act of giving presents to remind us of this gift has been lost or destroyed for most in the West by the greed of materialism. Many shops obtain a vital proportion of their income from Christmas so if they fail to get it one year they go bust. Get it another year and they are rich. I can’t see the difference between that and gambling to be honest.

I think the original idea of the gift needs to be found again. It is not a thing but a person - Jesus. If nothing else the importance of another human being given for us is, at least, part of the point of this story in the Gospels. The things don’t matter – people do. The gift I will receive, this year, is my family and my friends wherever they are. It is the love that comes from those you love that sees you through the year. It is the people who pass through your life. It is Anumita and Mueed and all the other many students I have had the honour of knowing – even on a very small scale.

This Christmas, I want to be more aware than ever, that I have all the gifts I could ever need right here with me now even if, physically, some of them are thousands of miles away. I need to appreciate that sometimes those gifts are temporary, meant to be in my life for a season and then to go again.

My family and I are struggling with not being home. We miss the UK, the snow that everyone there is complaining about, the decorations, the cheesy music and the warm glow that is all around at this time of year. But one day we will be back and then every Christmas we will be missing Bangladesh instead! We will see all the problems back in the UK and long for the perfect images that our memories trick us with and pine for Bangladesh. It is good to miss the past - but not if we fail to see the present slipping past us.

Instead, I need to be able to say ‘This is where I am now. This is here. This is the gift for me right now.’ I need to say thank you for those who have been put in my life. And I can be thankful for the gift of those that were with me in years gone by. Whether on the other side of the world or having gone to another world I can miss them and rejoice that they were entrusted to me for a little while.

And I can use this to remind myself that what I have now is equally entrusted for a just a short while. I must not let it slip by unawares.

Why I don't want my kids to get an A

Sometimes I think I am the worst kind of educationalist. After all, I don’t believe in education.

Let me qualify that. I don’t believe in education the way the West says it should be. And, as a result, I can honestly say I don’t want my kids to get the best possible results at school. I don’t want A grades, I don’t want a fistful of A levels, I don’t want a 1^st at university and, as they are budding musicians, I don’t want Distinctions at all their grades.

Does this sound a bit dodgy from someone who has been teaching for 18 years? Hypocritical for someone who is proud to have seen many hundreds of students get their GCSEs, A levels and degrees and been a part of that? Bizarre utterings from someone who has tried to push musical talent to find its best in every student and had many go on to become professional musicians themselves?

Well, it all depends on what you call education and why you think we should be teaching it at all.

For many years, I saw in the UK an increasing pursuit of education at all costs. Schools proud of almost all of their GCSE students taking up A levels, or how they have pushed more ‘D’ grade students into the ‘C’ bracket and so on. Universities now seem to be full to the brim of students who, years ago, would never have made it to a degree at all.

I have to question the motives of the institutions that allow this to go on. It is fairly obvious that most of the time it comes down to money (either saving it or getting more of it) and a lot has to do with prestige. Schools want to outperform others locally and, with OFSTED breathing down their necks, they feel compelled to do so or risk losing jobs.

But being here in Bangladesh has helped me to voice the deep suspicion I felt for years in those institutions. Why on earth do we want to educate children at all?

Now don’t get me wrong, I love learning. I even love taking exams. And I certainly love pushing myself further to develop my skills and knowledge. This I want to encourage in students. I want them to surpass themselves and, in doing so, to deepen their love for learning. But do I really care if they get an A or a B or a D? Not really. Most of what I learn now I am really rubbish at (you should hear my Bangla – beshi karap) but one young man taught me that it does not matter.

Many years ago, whilst at university, I began teaching students on the piano. One boy came to me and barely uttered a word in every lesson. But he listened carefully and slowly worked his way through music books. Very slowly. He seemed to have no real talent at all. Indeed, after many years we started Grade 1 work with a year to take the exam. We ran out of time. I had to buy new pieces and have us start all over again because he took so long. The traditional teacher’s advice at this point is that the lad had no talent and should give up.

But how could I do this when I knew from his mum that every morning he would get up and immediately practise without having to be told to do so? He was doing everything right, he was just taking a very long time to do it!

I have never been over-awed by student’s talent – I’ve seen a lot of it over the years but students themselves tend to see it that they are the only ones who have it. I have had to deal with students and parents who thought their little darling was the talent in the school and should be given special treatment. I have never agreed with such a way of thinking, instead, it is the ones who show the effort, the love, the desire to learn that interest me. And so I stuck with this boy.

Eventually, he took his grade one exam – and got a merit! Then he went on to do grade 2 and got a merit for that too. And so on it went until, eventually, he was a very fine pianist with a string of grades. He taught me a lot in doing that. No matter how difficult or lacking in the traditional view of ‘talent’ a student is, if they have the desire to learn I have the patience to teach. Conversely, no matter what skill or genius they have, if they are lazy or obnoxious then they can go find another teacher.

So what does this have to do with my kids getting an ‘A’ or my views on education?

Well, here in Bangladesh education has a purpose. Get a grade, get a job, get a wage, get food on the plate for you and your family. Simple. Honest. Necessary.

But in the UK it is ostensibly about that but really it is – get a good job, better than the next guy. Get more money, work less, have better holidays and better stuff. Avoid having to do the crap jobs.

And that last sentence is where I really have a problem. The person I have learned more from here in two years has been my ayah. Poorest of the poor, no real education (she can read and write Bangla to a level but that is all), with many in her family to look after yet she is hard-working, honest, efficient, and intuitively clever and thoughtful. The last person outside my closest and personal friends I respected this much was Mark Ashton, our wonderful vicar from the Round church, Cambridge who, even up to his death earlier this year, showed the most amazing knowledge, care and compassion I have ever had the honour to witness. And I see similar in Bangladesh, the same hard-working down to earth, humble and honest attitudes from people who have very simple jobs.

The fact is, we still have to have people do these essential jobs. We need farmers, crop harvesters, road sweepers, cleaners, cooks, plumbers, builders and so on just as much as the doctors, teachers, politicians, lawyers and other so-called ‘intelligent’ careers.

But our insistence on seeing these latter jobs as more important or better or more worthy or deserving of greater respect is utterly abhorrent to me. How can I tell one man or woman that because they grow rice I am more important than they because I teach others to become doctors and save lives or similar? Whose work am I eating from my plate each day? What will those imaginary ‘saved lives’ eat each day? If you leave it to me to grow my own food I will starve! I can’t do it! I have no idea how to keep plants of any sort alive even though I teach kids all about plant nutrition and can tell you the chemical formulas behind plant growth. Head knowledge and actual experience are very different things.

So… my kids? Well I am quite proud of myself that, thus far, I have not done what many friends predicted would happen. I am a bit of a rebellious teacher and I have been told many times “Ah, but it will be different with your own – you’ll see”. Well, so far the critics have been completely wrong. I don’t want my two children to get the top results, be top of the class or end up with the best jobs.

I want them to be happy.

That’s what I have learned here. That even in the midst of troubles, poverty, crisis and death, Life pulsates all around. The ones I respect here are not the boro lok - the rich and the important. They are the ones that whatever their circumstances have found peace and take joy wherever they can find it. That is a gift the West can never give to the people of Bangladesh. I think we need to learn it from them.

I want my children to learn well and make good use of their educational time. I want them to learn how to learn and how to enjoy it and this is what I have always tried to give my own school kids. The best compliment ever paid to me as a teacher was not actually said to me. It was after a particularly difficult and boring music lesson I had to give to some year 7 students. As they were all leaving I overheard one say to another “I really love music lessons. I’m no good at it, like, and I can’t do it well but I really love the lessons”. The kid had no idea I was listening but I was deeply touched. Even after a ‘dreadful’ lesson, if I was keeping kids interested in being in the class and keeping them on the road to learning it really did not matter what I taught them or how well they did. They were learning to love learning.

I want my kids to learn, love it and get the best grade they deserve. I want them to get grades that, in the end, they can say “Yep, that seems about right”. I want them to get the level of job that is appropriate for them. If that means stacking shelves for the rest of their lives because that is the right intellectual level for them and they will be happy doing so then I will be so very proud of them. We need shelf-stackers!

When I left school after A levels I was militantly anti-university and determined to be a bin man. Indeed, my first job was putting radios and speakers in to cars – quite a physical job because I had to do lots of drilling and cutting and lifting of seats out of cars. It didn’t need an A level in Maths to do it. I loved it. But another vicar, Peter Lawrie, from my church as a youth – St. Johns, whitwick – very wisely pointed out to me (poor man, I was accepted as one of the family so he got to hear my outrageous rants on an almost daily basis) that if I, an intelligent and qualified young fellow, became a dustbin man I was taking away the job of another who did not have my qualifications and could never do the type of job I was ‘mentally’ appropriate for. He was right. If had remained doing car radios I would have been bored stupid within years and probably hating life by now. I needed the more intellectually demanding work.

So, if you are a student and you hate the idea of going on to university – don’t go! But, beware, the job you get instead could be the rest of your life. Can you live with that? If you can, then go for it and be proud of the work you do.

For as long as we insist on telling people that one job is more important than another rather than honest work being more important than dishonest, we will continue to have the unhappiness in the workplace - the selfish drive for better pay, better conditions, better possessions well beyond that of basic human needs. We will continue to have too many students taking university and dropping out feeling failures instead of happily pursuing a valuable job that requires less mental energy but more physical. A car mechanic and I are just as clever as each other. Only my job hurts my head at the end of a long day and his hurts his hands.

We should work with the view of doing the best we can rather than pursuing the easiest and most comfortable option. If, in your work place you are saying “There must be more than this” than ask yourself  “Do I want more for me or do I want more so I can benefit others better?” If we don’t, we will never be satisfied. Greed is always hungry.

Of course, after all this expounding and theorising (which I do practise with all children), I realise that my father was doing this with me long ago when I was too young to get it. He used to look at my report card from school and totally disregard my As and Bs. He knew I was clever, he didn’t need no teachers to tell him that. Instead he looked at the numbers by the side that indicated effort. God help me if he saw 3, 4 or 5 which was satisfactory to very unsatisfactory. Anything less that 1s and 2s meant trouble because I was not pulling my weight, not doing my best. My family are very sporty but, alas, I am not. Yet, if my school report indicated that despite the E grade I was putting in really very good effort then my father was happy and made me feel proud.

But then I was always very proud of my father too and as the first anniversary of his passing away approaches at the time of writing, that pride has never diminished. Yet, I am not aware of any A grades he may have achieved and he never went to University. He worked hard all his life and had a reputation for being honest. He did his best and I don’t think he could have asked for more from himself. That’s what I want for my kids.

All of them.

Opposites Attract

“Right then,” I said to the attentive Grade Eights “Today we shall look at magnetism. And I have some magnets right here to show you.”

This was a moment of some excitement for both the students and myself, I have to say. In the course of the two years I have spent at LAMB. Most of the subjects I have taught have been science related. Not bad for someone who qualified as a musician and has spent most of the last eighteen years teaching music. Although my teaching qualification qualifies me to teach “any subject” to “any age group” there are some subjects I am not likely to try my hand at.

Physical Education, for instance.

Anyone who really knows me will need no telling what a disaster it would be if I was left in charge of a bunch of teenagers to use what I consider to be illegal weapons in the form of cricket bats, balls and that most deadly of weapon, the skipping rope. Even worse if it was my Fourth Grade class who sit attentively for me in our science class but, I suspect, would become as stealthy and lethal as Ninja dwarves if allowed anywhere near shuttlecocks and racquets. And then there is hockey. The thought of me controlling (just not possible) a group of teenage girls playing that particular form of abuse does not bear thinking about. I suspect I would find myself in hospital as much as most of the losing team (and a fair number of the winning side too).

Similarly, despite great artistic skill buried deep, deep within my soul, I think that teaching art could only result in either a new wave of artistic expression that would leave the Dadaists speechless or a disaster in the classroom of epic proportions which would result in the cleaning ayah not speaking to me for the rest of my (presumably short) life.

Still, most other subjects I have taught from time to time and I very nearly went down the maths/science route for my own career before choosing music so this is a reasonably safe area for me to teach. Except for one area.

Practicals.

Now, it is a well-established rule in the science world (at least in the one involved with education) that if an experiment can go wrong it will go wrong. I regularly suggest to my students that if they do an experiment that actually goes right then they must take care not to damage the universe further as when an experiment goes right the whole universe is destroyed and instantly replaced with an identical one (who says I can’t screw with their minds at least a little bit). We would never know it has happened, but it is just damned annoying to know that it has.

On a more realistic plane, I do have the very real fear that if I am responsible for an experiment I could be responsible for a whole range of deaths and disfigurements. Electrocution, acid burns, poisoning, glass shards ripping out eyes, hearing loss, fingers trapped in contraptions and (most heinous of all) tea spilt on the teacher’s laptop. I have not heard of a single school in the UK that has not had some kind of accident usually resulting in a trip to the hospital. Of course, the staff there will have been fully trained and experienced, they themselves having conducted hundreds of experiments so that when it goes wrong (and it will) they know they did everything right. I don’t think I could ever be entirely sure.

So, I will teach theory up to any level of complexity but I do not do experiments. Instead I spend hours downloading videos from the internet (legally, I hope) of others doing experiments to show the kids instead. Generally, this works well but, well, it must be said, it can be boring. I’ve not yet fallen both asleep and off my stool whilst actually talking and teaching but I have come close. I am reminded of the teacher at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter stories who died during a break time and didn’t realise it, so has carried on teaching ever since. That could be me one day.

Some of my students (not many, I’ll admit) tell me I am more interesting than other teachers who are all boring and this is nice to hear, even if it is that when talking to said ‘other’ teachers it transpires the same kids said the same thing to them except with order of teachers reversed! Still, I would hate you to think that I was deadly boring. But even I sometimes think an experiment or two wouldn’t go amiss.

So, it was for all this reasoning that there was great excitement that I had got a bunch of magnets out for the Grade eight science class. Magnets, I thought, are perfectly safe short of flinging one into someone’s eye. Even I, with my lack of practical experience, can handle magnets. Though playing with magnets would seem a simple and boring thing to do in a UK high school, here in the Dinajpur region of Bangladesh the resources we have are very limited though they increase with every coming year thanks to helpful donations from many supporters all over the world. And the fact that ‘Uncle Ken’ does not normally touch anything he is suspicious of being ‘scientific’ in purpose (let alone ‘sportslike’) meant that this was a special occasion.

I had just been teaching static electricity and putting forward the concept that opposites attract and like charges repel. We had drawn up diagrams of magnets with North and South poles and how the magnetic fields point towards or away from each other depending on the polarity. I took out two magnets with their poles clearly indicated.

“So, let’s make sure that you have all been paying attention.” I said with that smug air of a teacher who knows he is on safe ground “If I move the North pole of this magnet towards the North pole of the other, what will happen?”

“They will repel, Uncle”

I confirmed that I considered this a most excellent answer and proceeded, slowly to push the two north ends together demonstrating in practice the wisdom of my teaching.

Kerchink went the magnets as both North ends stuck themselves together with such satisfying speed as to leave no one in any doubt that, far from repelling, they had in fact shown every indication of being attracted.

I doubt I could have been more embarrassed had I come to school and too late realised I had forgotten to put any clothes on (well, ok – maybe that one would top it) and the class (including another teacher who was observing me teach to ‘learn’ how I do it) burst into laughter. I, in true Basil Fawlty manner then did it again and again, putting South and South together, watching North and South repel and so on in some vague hope that somehow the result would change. It didn’t.

Having gone from the heights of excitement and confidence, I now plummeted to Eeyorelike depths and realised that my hopes of demonstrating controlled nuclear fusion in the science lab before I leave were irrevocably and permanently put on hold. I could not make even the simple laws of magnetism work in the classroom.

In truth, it was funny and I quickly did what any self-respecting teacher would do. I blamed someone else.

“Oh.” I said. “Someone must have written N and S the wrong way round.” True enough, though one magnet had the letters etched, the other had them written by hand in pen and must have been written in error. The class was pacified and we moved swiftly on. The class departed at the end of the lesson and I was left to ruminate on what had happened.

This, I thought, is why I do not do experiments.

Still, it could have been worse. I could have been teaching hockey to girls.

I Have A Dog

“I once had a dog,

Or should I say,

He once had me.”

With apologies to John Lennon but I could not resist opening with that paraphrase which neatly sums up my situation at the moment here at LAMB.

Bardy is a stray dog who, for some reason known only to him, has decided that our home and family are to be his home and family. This decision of his has not come without problems as well as joys and has left me ruminating over the meaning of pets and the relationship of animals with Bangladeshis.

Bardy himself is something of an unwanted dog. Even his name is not right. Apparently it was said to be his name as a joke by a kid from the school who actually gave another kid’s nickname. Somehow the word got around and it stuck. He is just the most incredibly affectionate and friendly dog who loves the kids at the school and is really pleased to see anyone. Unfortunately, he also goes where there is food and that means hospital areas and the school at snack break time. Though Bardy himself is as soft as anything, where there is one stray dog others are sure to follow and they certainly do.

Bardy’s friendliness to humans becomes submission to other dogs and as a result he gets ‘chewed out’ literally and this means a lot of barking, fighting, growling and teeth baring that scares children and adults alike. And that’s where it all goes wrong and gets confused. Scared people means complaints, complaints mean there is a problem and where there is a problem – at least as far as strays are concerned – it means removal by the only means likely to work. As a dog-lover that scenario upsets me. Bardy is, in a very real sense, living on Death Row. He doesn’t know it, but he could find that one day he wakes up and it is his last - well before his time.

Of course, that is a last resort but the clock is ticking as options continue to run out. No one wants to do the job of getting rid of the strays but at the same time most people want ‘someone’ to do it. As long as it is not them. So I continue to feed Bardy, give him limited shelter if he wants it in the form of our porch which I keep open at night so he can sleep safely, I keep other dogs away and I train him in the hope that deshis here will see that these animals are intelligent and capable. But he is not mine and I can’t protect him all the time. Sometimes, he has turned up bleeding all over from wounds inflicted by other dogs or by men who have beaten him.

I saw him kicked the other day before I could tell the person to stop because he was ‘my dog’ (To say the truth, that I belong to the dog, would just be way too confusing). Interestingly, Bardy barely moved. Didn’t growl, didn’t run away. He just acknowledged he had been kicked and carried on barking at the stray dog that had appeared in the noisy manner that had elicited the kicking in the first place. I found myself comparing this to the lot of many women here – especially the poor ones – who are often beaten, punished, scolded, starved or otherwise harmed by husbands or (as often as not) mothers-in-law. Usually the response, when asked why they put up with it, is the same. “Why would I not? I am poor. I am a woman. This is what happens.” Bardy seemed to say the same thing. “I am kicked. I am a dog. This happens.”

You may well be upset that I have just compared women to dogs but please don’t misunderstand me. Very often the value of a woman is about the same as a dog and certainly less than the value of a cow. A cow for a village man produces milk and meat that can be sold or used by the family. A woman produces nothing. In our first day of living in Bangladesh we were taken to the Language school in Banani where we would spend 3 months learning the language. The woman who was the head there led us into her office. As we spoke I noticed the poster behind her on the wall. In Bangla it said “My wife does nothing” and the picture was of a traditionally dressed married woman with around 20 arms coming out of her, each doing a different task – cooking, cleaning, washing children, milking the cow, cutting corn in the field and so on. But she does nothing. A far cry from the men we often see huddled together by the bank of a river playing cards and gossiping for hours on end.

Our own ayah (who is, in my opinion, one of the most important women I have ever had the honour of knowing and learning from), works with incredible efficiency and speed in our house, often second-guessing what we are thinking of when we forget to actually ask her for some lunch and so on. She goes home after a full day’s work and then does all the work for her own house. On her day off, she tells us she does even more work there and that, in some ways, coming to our house to work is more like a chuti (holiday). We have been to her house many times and it is beautifully kept and maintained despite the difficulties of living in a house made of mud and a country that is wet for most of the time. But I digress.

Life, as you may imagine, out in Dinajpur (in the Northwest of Bangladesh) can be pretty hard for all – man or woman – and working in a hospital environment where people often only come as a last resort (and therefore dying), means that we see it at its worst. Many of the Bideshis (foreigners) here struggle with what they see, working all hours and emotionally being drained of energy. But we only see it and get involved in trying to help. It is the deshis who actually suffer the diseases, the poverty, the malnutrition and the abuse. They do so, usually, stoically and with great honour and though I can never empathise with their plight (to suggest I could would be an insult), I feel proud to have served these amazing people.

Yet, (and please read what I have written again to weigh what I say next properly) of all the things we have seen in two years, all the pain as well as joy, the one image that sticks in my mind and heart is not one of people. This article is about dogs remember.

Whilst still in our 3 months training in Dhaka, my wife and I were walking to the Language school one early morning as the dokanders were setting up their shops on the streets. Suddenly we heard a yapping from the other side of a street. This cute little puppy was waddling around obviously excited by everything it was seeing and running up to anyone who came near the stall that had been set up. We assumed the puppy belonged to the dokander as it seemed very healthy and not mangy and thin like strays normally look here. I can only describe it as looking and acting like the Andrex puppy off the adverts back in the UK. We carried on walking but we were both moved (in truth, Vikki had melted). A little further on we turned back to look at the little thing waddling across the street to a nicely dressed man on the other side who was passing by.

“I wonder if it belongs to anyone” Said Vikki “it’s so cute”.

I thought it must have belonged to someone – the stall owner at least – but we never found out. At that point, the well dressed man, who was grinning but obviously irritated by the animal, started to kick it gently and push it back into the street with his foot. At just that moment a car drove slowly by and he pushed the puppy with his foot straight under the car’s front wheel. Time seemed to freeze as we watched, horrified as the body lay motionless after the car had passed. There was no commotion. Just the young man kicked the body with his foot to make sure it was dead and carried on with his walk to work. I don’t think he had intended to kill the animal, just get rid of it. He still grinned but now with a sheepish “oops” kind of a look.  But he didn’t care either way and nor did any of the dozen or so people milling around at the time who saw what happened. We, however, felt sick in the stomach and though we went to the school for our studies, we could not concentrate. Even now, I feel ill to remember what happened.

When I see Bardy (or any animal) I am reminded of that incident and the strange relationship that Bangladeshis have with animals. Cows and chickens, of course, have great value along with many other animals that provide meat, milk and hide that can be used. Cats and dogs tend not to be valued, but even here in Dinajpur, many poor people keep both and look after them with care and attention. We were once told that Bangladeshis hate cats and certainly one of our friends is terrified of them. But the person who told us was a Bideshi who doesn’t like animals themselves and we have quickly realised that in this country you see what you want to see and you interpret things according to your own values. I’ve heard a lot of rubbish from NGO workers here. The ones I trust, ones who have been here for many, many years and are almost more Bangladeshi than of their own country – they are the ones who will tell you more truthfully that the longer they live here the less they know with certainty. It’s a complex place.

So I can’t tell you if Bangladeshis love animals as pets or not. Some do, some don’t. Some at LAMB are terrified of them and complain asking for them to be ‘got rid of’ in some unspoken manner. Others tell us that they think the Bideshi way of treating them is inhumane and immoral. “They are a life.” one deshi told me “how can I destroy a life?” In an environment set up to save and support life I am surprised more don’t agree. But then I am British. I am an animal lover. Pets are part of my life and always have been. That’s probably why I was so affected by that puppy. It’s probably why Bardy has had such an affect on me here. I left my own dog back in the UK to come here and he was, in some ways, the hardest sacrifice despite leaving home, comfort, family, money, friends and a 100 other things. I left a life behind. I am not sure I can leave this one defenceless.

Bardy, of course, is totally oblivious to all of this and can cause trouble. Another stray dog attempted to get into the church building just before the service a few days ago and, for once, Bardy went crazy. The two bawling animals literally fell into the church causing screams from children, women and men alike. Neither dog was hurt and neither attempted any violence towards a human being but, as the expression goes, the bark was worse than the bite and people were scared. Bardy fully focussed on the other dog who was, without doubt, the enemy. In the end, I went and sorted it out, without violence, with a bucket of water. It is my usual weapon against dogs and always works in driving them from my home, the school and now the church. My hope is that people come to realise that you can get them to go away without hurting them at all. But Bardy’s unusual anger has not helped his own plight.

“Stupid dog” I said to him as I locked up for the night leaving him sleeping on the veranda. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

And then, proving who really is the more stupid, I turned, smiled at him and patted him on the head.

“Goodnight Pal.” I said “See you in the morning. I hope.”

Two Tribes

A moralistic tale of two cultures. He who has ears...

Once upon a time there was a tribe of people who could only look to the left and another tribe of people who could only look to the right.

The tribe of ‘Right-lookers’ found that by standing opposite each other on each other’s right side they could see each other clearly. This worked really well as they got a clear view of each other’s face, meaning they got to know each other really well. They could see all things whether right or wrong and were able to help each other with problems in this way. Alas, over time, the idea of standing opposite each other meant that some began to think that opposite thinking was the best way. So, increasingly, criticism of each other took place and it became normal that problems were solved by arguing with each other for many hours until decisions were made. It took a long time and sometimes people got hurt - but progress was made.

The tribe of ‘Left-lookers’ found a different solution to dealing with each other. They decided to stand side by side facing the same way together, united in their goals and direction. However, it did mean they only ever got to see the back of each other’s head. This made it harder to know a person directly but that was okay as they were so united in their ideas that it was natural just to call everyone ‘brother’ or ‘aunty’ and other family names. Individuals didn’t matter a great deal. They developed huge communities that worked well together in times of crisis and trouble and they worked and walked side by side. However, just as they avoided looking directly at each other’s faces (which was considered very rude and disrespectful) so they never criticised each other directly. Instead they would tell others, who would tell others who would tell the person being criticised. Sometimes this was good because, if a brother was doing something wrong, three or four others would come to tell him and, while they were there, they would help him fix it too. Solving problems though, took a long time and sometimes people got hurt – but progress was made.

Now the two tribes knew about each other but just looked enviously at each other’s societies. Over many years, the Right tribe had better land whilst the Left tribe struggled with bad weather and many disasters but were much cleverer as a result of having to fix things. Also, they started having little fights with each other and stealing from one another. But the Right tribe had better resources and by stealing good, clever and beautiful things from the Left people gained the advantage. Eventually the Right tribe took over the Left tribe.

Unfortunately, in the Right tribe’s language, there was no difference between “Right” and “Correct” and so they came to view all things ‘righty’ as being the only true way to do things. They could not understand the Left tribe’s ‘leftiness’ and their silly adherence to this way. It infuriated the Right people that Left people could not do anything directly and always took a difficult route to do… well, anything really. The Right people struggled with the Left people’s land which was hot and often dangerous. They could not persuade the Left people to become Right like them and all the time the Left people had the ridiculous notion that they could look after themselves and all Right people did was take their valuables. ‘What nonsense,’ thought the Right people ‘Right is Might and we are mighty. Left is best left behind. If they must be Left then they deserve to have us take their things and use them the Right way.’

Over time though, the views of the Right people began to change. They got tired of telling Left people what to do and all the trouble the Left people caused. Some of them began to doubt that Right really did mean correct and the word spread. When they nearly got taken over by Up people they really began to re-think how they viewed others. Soon, no Right person believed they were right at all and they left the land of the Left tribe and went back to their own land. Of course, they didn’t give back anything they had stolen or help with the damage they had caused. Nor did they help with any of the problems that Left people had to deal with all the time anyway – like the weather. They just left the Lefts.

Many years later the Rights continued to prosper from all the things they had taken long ago but the Lefts never really recovered. Soon, Left people began to come to the land of the Rights to ask for help in their land. They needed food, clothes, medicine, education and so much more. So some of the kinder Right people began to organise ways to come over and help.

This could have been a great time of healing and understanding between these two great tribes but, alas, the Right people still really did not understand how the Left people did things and, because they were so brash and abrupt, the Left people were easily offended by some of the things Right people did even when trying to help.

Some Right people were so ashamed of their own tribe that they tried to become ‘lefty’ and wore the same clothes as Left people and even walked backwards so they would walk with a Left person in a Left way – side by side. Unfortunately, this just looked silly to everyone and instead of building relationships just embarrassed other Right people and their own Left friends. Some Right people tried to tell Left people how to behave and how to do things and how they must do things in the old traditional Left way, even though many Left people liked some of the Right ways and thought that they might just be…well, right.

And so, the same old confused communications took place. Many Left people just didn’t want Right people there at all and others wanted to give up being Left and just be exactly like Right people. No Right person believed they should rule the Left people again but a lot of them despaired of how Left people could just not get it Right. Others tried to stop any help given to the Lefts because it might make them more Right and that was wrong – even if it meant leaving the Lefts in trouble and despair. At least it was Left trouble and despair.

This is how it is today. It is sad really because all the bad things about being Right - like arguing and fighting and stealing and confrontation - are happening in Left land whilst the Right people are losing any sense of friendship, or family or working together which the Left people are just brilliant at. The Left land is still short of resources and is beaten by the terrible weather whilst the Right land still contains all the resources the Left people need. Some Right people still think they know better than Left people how to run Left land and some Left people see the Right land with all its riches and think “I need to be Right and do the Right man’s things. Then I will be rich like him”.

Very few Right people come to Left land happy in their own Righty natures but glad to learn some Leftiness from Left people too. They come to help where the Left person tells them they need help and they have realised that if they walk on the Left person’s side they can see them comfortably the way they are used to in their own land, but at the same time can walk side by side the way the Left person needs to be comfortable too. Both have to learn to do this and cope with a new way of doing things, but they enjoy working and learning together.

Unfortunately, the rest of the Right and Left people laugh at them and say “How silly and how simple. It’ll never last”.

I am Left thinking they may be Right…

Of Socks and Cucumbers

I live in a world where food tastes of socks, where men demand kisses from other men, where some worship belly buttons and cucumbers are known to ride three-wheeled bicycles.

Have I been imbibing some alcoholic beverage? Am I hallucinating? Is my beloved Bangladesh a den of iniquity and filled with mind-altering drugs or has the heat finally got to me and I have lost the plot?

Actually, none of the above (well, those who know me well may debate the last one). Instead, I live in the kind of world that is experienced wherever people from different cultures and languages meet. It is a wonderful place because those who are best in this world (such as myself – a definite expert in this area) are really the most incompetent. We excel because we fail - and in doing so are able to provide some humour, some ray of hope, some sunshine on an otherwise grey day for others to enjoy.

It is, of course, the world of communication (or, more accurately, miscommunication). It is a happy world because, in the very attempt to make contact with fellow brothers and sisters from a different culture to ours, we fail so miserably that the humour it creates actually makes a stronger bond than that which any correct communication would have achieved in the first place. In other words, everyone loves a guy who makes an ass of himself.

I could bore you with lots of examples of my own pratfalls here in Bangladesh, but if you know me you may well have heard them before and, over time I have picked up a few from others that make some of my errors just look amateurish. I share with you now – for your amusement and sage reflection – some recent ones I have heard as well as some classics. Almost all of them are from here in Bangladesh and, bar one, come from firsthand accounts.

Our own first attempts at Bangla were, of course, pretty awful. In a country where respect and honour are so very important, we did not ingratiate ourselves with our first ayah by constantly telling her that the food she gave us tasted of socks. There was all the difference, it seemed, between mOja (socks) and moja (tasty). In much the same way, I regularly used to imply to shopkeepers that their establishment had killed me (ami shesh) instead of informing them that my shopping was finished (amar shesh) and I was ready to pay.

A friend of ours here at our NGO went one better by asking her ayah if her clothes (hanging on the washing line) were pigs. Confused, the ayah tried to clarify the situation but the conversation took quite some time until both realised that the confusion lay over the words for pig (Shukor) and dry (shukna).

That same ayah, who is a good friend of ours, then made her own faux pas in the English language with us, a few weeks later when she kept asking us to squeeze her. Not that I would have minded actually but it is not the culturally done thing so it was mildly surprising from a young married Bangladeshi woman until it quickly dawned on us that “Squeeze me” was actually meant to be “Excuse me”. I’m so glad I resisted the British urge to please even when really not sure of what someone is asking and refrained from giving a bear hug.

Still, such small differences are easy to miss and all cultures have their little ways about them. The South-Asian ‘head wobble’ is one such mannerism that causes confusion. To us Brits it looks like “I’m saying yes but I’m not happy and don’t really want to do it”. To the Bangladeshi it can mean…well anything you want it to mean really! Usually it means yes, but don’t get on a Rickshaw on the strength of the head wobble and assume you won’t get a massive argument over the price when you reach your destination.

For this reason, one foreign couple came to a row of CNG’s (motorised scooters that, along with Rickshaws are the main forms of transport in Dhaka) and asked the one at the front if the driver would take them to a certain part of town. The driver appeared to say he didn’t really want to so, being good polite Westerners they moved to the next driver who also signalled that he wasn’t interested. And so they moved to the next and so on all the way along the line and eventually walked there instead. It was only afterwards that they came to realise they had misread the head wobble and all the drivers had been perfectly happy to take them. Still, the exercise probably did them good.

It is not just us beginners who make mistakes though. Nerves can attack anyone. One friend of ours who has lived here many, many years and speaks Bangla fluently attempted to give a talk to a crowded church about Jesus the Last Old Testament Belly button. Alas, our friend had not appreciated the similarity in sound of prophet (nobi) and belly button (nabhi) though Bangladeshis delighted in pointing out his error afterwards.

Children, of course, will make many errors and my son loves to babble away in Bangla bewildering our ayahs who look at him in much the same way that English friends do when he babbles just as bizarrely in English. He speaks well, but his mind is often on another planet – proof, if I needed it, that he is most certainly my son. No such excuse for our daughter who is older yet still aged her best friend by 10 years when wishing her a happy 23^rd birthday (teish) instead of 13^th (tero) recently.

I should stop at this point and make clear that I don’t pick on any particular type of person. We can all get it wrong and it is good that we do. When I first began teaching I was told a personal tale by my tutor of a teacher from France who came over to the UK to teach French there. Though able to speak English, she was nervous about using the language and made careful preparations. On her first day her class were standing outside her room waiting to be told to come in to the class in an orderly fashion and stand behind their chairs before being told to sit. Instead she greeted the class with “Good morning, pleeze sit down!”

Being a good class they promptly did. The horror on her face was a picture.

“No, no, no what are you doing you naughty children? Get up, get up!”

Bewildered, but obedient, the class returned to their feet.

“Thank you. Now. Pleeze sit down”

Well you can imagine the scene as an increasingly bemused class and angry teacher repeated this several times more, the French teacher becoming more and more flustered, until a kindly colleague, hearing the fuss and realising what was going on, stepped up to her and whispered in her ear that perhaps she had confused her carefully practised commands of “line up” for outside the class and “sit down” for in. Red-faced, embarrassed but now considerably wiser, she hurried the class indoors.

And I guess that is the point. Whilst we make these great gaffs, we are learning about ourselves and about others as well as picking up the subtleties of the language in a way that keeps us humble (always a good thing). In becoming wiser we also become more accepted. When people make mistakes which are harmless and funny, you cannot help but warm to them. Your enemy cannot seem threatening to you when they have just landed (metaphorically or otherwise) on their backside.

Nevertheless, there is a dangerous side to this. It is one that can give very false impressions. Thankfully, one of our foreign staff members at our NGO here a few years ago was well known when she stood up and announced she was going home to eat her husband. Much amusement, rather than shock was the response from her friends and co-workers who demanded, after the laughter had died away to know what she thought she had said in Bangla. One needs to know the difference in Bangladesh between shami (husband) and shemai (a kind of sweet wheat-like snack) if one is not in good company - and even more so if one is.

The closest to a difficult situation I know, however, came from one foreigner staying at our Guest House who turned to the cook in the kitchen and asked for a spoon from him.

“I’m sorry sir” the cook replied in Bangla “I can’t do that”.

Irritated, but aware that possibly he had been not quite properly understood, the man demanded a spoon again. Now.

“I’m sorry I won’t do that sir” said the cook.

This was the moment that things could have turned sour as the cook was most certainly not doing his job. The foreigner, raising his voice but just keeping calm said “I need a spoon from you now!”

The more sensible of the two (the Bangladeshi of course) at this point asked him what he thought he was asking for in English and the man told him again that it was a spoon. It was then that the humble cook gave this educated and highly intelligent Westerner possibly the most important lesson he would learn in Bangladesh. That a Chamoch is a spoon but a chumu (which he had repeatedly said with such certainty) was not.

It was a kiss.

Thankfully, both were able to see the funny side of it and one of them, at least, left a wiser man.

As one wise person once told me, the only way to learn to play Chess well is to lose. How true this is in all walks of life. We learn as we make mistakes. The wonderful thing about language errors when you are in the country of the language you are learning is that in making these errors we make friends along the way. Laughter always breaks the ice.

Despite this, there must be at least one Rickshaw driver in Dhaka who does not think highly of a young foreign woman we met whilst doing our language training there in the capital. She came into the language school in fits of giggles one morning. “Oh my goodness” she said, gasping for breath “I’ve just shouted at our Rickshaw wallah and called him a fruit!”

In trying to persuade him to go straight on (shoja) she had got more irate as he continued to not understand her Bangla and shouted “Shosha, shosha” all the more. Shosha, of course, is a cucumber.

Not all mistakes are good ones.

How to memorise and study properly and easily

Recently I was asked on this blog if I could provide tips to aid learning scientific information at a high level. Actually, I intend to write an E-book on the subject and have already drafted much of it to go into depth with the very techniques I teach daily here in Bangladesh.

I developed these ideas over many years and with a lot of research into the current theories around partly because of being a teacher and needing to find the best ways to cram knowledge into my students’ heads but mostly because, frankly, I have the worst memory in the world! These techniques, then, have all been used by me personally and I continue to use them daily.

I found the whole subject of memorising fascinating and have been hooked since my early days after reading (as seems obligatory these days) the incredible Use Your Head by Tony Buzan. I shamelessly add a link to it with this blog and although nowadays the information it contains is a little out of date or simplistic, it is still the ideal starting point for anyone interested in learning how memory works and how to get the most out of your brain. I will also include some other links to books I have read and derived much benefit from. Do check them out.

Despite Buzan’s wonderful work his, and all other books I have read, really do not look at studying holistically and pragmatically from the student’s point of view. Rather they teach a technique (or techniques) and leave it up to the reader to work out how to put it all together for their own study. Few give decent lists of information to get on with practising memorising. If I am a student I probably want to know how to memorise historical dates or chemical formulae, not the wine lists of Bordeaux! Whilst those of us (sad as we are) may thoroughly love doing such memory work for the sheer pleasure of knowing we can bore the pants of someone at a party with our astounding trivial knowledge, the fact is, it is not very useful.

So, the system I have developed (and yes, it is adapted from many previous memory aids) is aimed primarily at students but anyone who wants to use their memory better will benefit. The big problem we have in schools both in the UK and Bangladesh is that how to study and memorise really is not taught properly. They are getting there but we are far from being ready. At my school here I insist on one lesson a week just dedicated to teaching students how to study. We need children learning these techniques as early as possible because the success of this system relies on it becoming a habit. For many this will seem odd, difficult and a lot of efforts but, like anything, it needs practice. Eventually, it becomes totally automatic.

Follow these methods and practise them and you will see a significant improvement to how well you hold information. It should also be much more fun! This being a blog I cannot give an awful lot of information, nor spruce it up in a fancy way but here is my quick guide to studying and memorizing along with some of the thinking behind it and some examples of the kind of studying myself or my students are doing at the moment:

The 10 point system

Before you begin

1)      Have a banana and drink regularly – Bananas more than other fruit give slow release energy and are better than coffee or tea to stimulate your mind. You need to be alert and fresh when beginning any study session. Likewise, when you feel yourself flagging go get a drink of water. Make yourself get it. That way you move, giving yourself exercise, refresh yourself with water which will help you concentrate better and is healthy for you and you will get a short natural break.

2)      Short, medium and long term memory - (learn, practise, revise) – The basic science from the psychologists says that our brains process new information by putting it into ‘short’ memory slots. This lets you remember a 5 digit number for a few minutes but quickly disappears. This is the Learning stage.

To move it into ‘medium’ memory it needs repetition so that it can be held for longer, like for a day or just long enough so you get through that exam at the end of the week. But, once the practice stops, it is swiftly forgotten. A year later and you can’t remember any of it. This is the Practise stage.

To enter permanent or ‘long term’ memory you need to have gone over the new information many, many times over a long period of time. The steps to follow, then, mirror this way the brain works. It means that if you want to know your stuff with confidence before that exam, you need to be getting on with the process of committing it to memory now rather than wait until ‘exam leave’. The sooner you begin, the more practice you get and the more information is stored in your long term memory. You may feel you won’t need that knowledge once that exam is passed but by committing it so deeply it means recall is almost instantaneous giving you both time to spare (for checking) and confidence in exams. This is the Revise stage.

Learn

3)      Short burst activity – it has taken me all day to write this short article but in that time I have also studied some Hebrew, Bangla, read several chapters from four different books, practised the Tobla and Piano, prepared my next lessons, answered 10 important and long emails and finished the draft for a feature for my hometown local newspaper. Ok, ok, I know. I am an obsessive short-burst activity fan but that is because it has become a habit for me. I’ve been working like this for 25 years and not once ever contemplated a better system.

The point is that the brain concentrates well for around 20-25 minutes and then loses concentration rapidly. You can keep it working well by changing focus. A new and very different activity is much better than the traditional ‘taking a rest’ philosophy often taught by schools. For instance, when teaching music I have always recommended that students, rather than give up practise time when exams are nearing, they should increase it! I would recommend that after 20-30 minutes of revision they should go practise the guitar or piano or whatever for 10-15 minutes. Then they should go back to academic revision and alternate in this way for the whole revision session. This way the brain keeps active and does not ‘fall asleep’.

4)      Understand your work – It is vital when studying that you thoroughly understand the principles behind the things you are trying to learn. No point rote-learning what fuels are siphoned off in the fractional distillation of crude oil if you have no idea what fractional distillation actually is. Don’t wait for your teacher to tell you – go online and find out for yourself. The more you understand the principles underlying the work you have to remember, the easier it is to remember it.

Practice

5)      Lights, camera, action and painting by numbers – The single key secret to memorising as is recommended by all good books on memory is to make pictures in your mind. We see picture much, much better than we remember words so turn everything into a picture. The funnier, the sillier and even the ruder the better (no one will know!). Anything to help keep it in your mind. As a result you find yourself smiling or giggling a little when you remember some important fact. This is where really understanding your subject comes in as important. If you are memorising bones of the body, for instance, which are usually named with Latin words that give a clue to their position or function or are named after a person associated with them, then knowing this helps you get a strong picture.

Best of all, where possible, link pictures into stories. Narrate them in your mind and make a silly little story out of them. You don’t just make pictures but you make one flow into another.

Finally, a simple system for remembering numbers (I have a more complex but highly useful one that I will share when I complete the e-book) is to use objects that rhyme with them, thus – one = bun; two = shoe; three = tree; four = door and so on. So, putting it all together and you might get the following:

I see myself in front of a huge tower and can hear lots of bubbling inside. A pipe at the bottom has come from the sea and I can see oil pumping along it into the tower. As I climb the tower I come to a door which I open. I notice the door is creaky and needs oiling. I continue up and open the next one and see a tree with a diesel engine sticking out of it(I didn’t say it had to be sensible!). Next up is a door that reveals an old Paraffin lamp which I use to look in and notice the lamp is actually burning two shoes. Finally I go up one more level where I see a man trying to get his motor bike started. Looking in the petrol tank I see the problem is it is stuffed full of bread buns

Did you spot the numbers 1-4? They were there and this picture actually tells me the temperature for the distillation of the various substances – Lubricating oil, Diesel, Paraffin and Petrol - from crude oil and their uses. Chemistry students (or at least mine!) should be able to see how the story relates. I could tell that story to my seven year old son and know he would have it memorised with only a couple of retellings but there is no way I would expect him to learn the O level standard Chemistry! This gives you a quick example of how easy and powerful this method is.

6)      The Memory house and similar links – This idea has been around a long time and, in fact, the infamous character of Hannibal Lecter is revealed to be using this method himself to both escape into another world in his mind and to explain his vast superior memory. Here we put our memories into rooms assigned for specific subjects. A room for chemistry, another for history and so on. I have adapted this method and use many rooms and houses that are associated, for me personally, with that task.

For instance, despite now living in Bangladesh, I always picture going into my house in the UK to remember shopping lists. This is because I was living there when I first began to memorise any shopping trip (whether for a few items or more than 30) and now my front porch is forever linked with supermarket buying! Likewise, any chemistry data I have memorised is stored in my image of the science lab at my school here in Bangladesh. This is because it is where the majority of my teaching of chemistry is done so it is the logical place to hold it. I have an entire building -a church and its offices in Paris- dedicated to musical history because I spent some time there during my university days and composed one of my favourite pieces of music there. The woman running the music group was also an amazing musician, great singer and easily the best classical organist I have ever heard. I have strong musical ties to that place so I use it for my music!

Another important idea is to cross-reference ideas. Some books refer to this as being a little like the London Underground Tube map. Individual lines or circles of information that cross over or connect to others. For instance, my Chemistry room has story lines for Acid information and for Alkaline/Bases but it also has one for Ions, Metals and Non-metals. Actually often these strands coincide with each other so I make them join up physically in my head, like two streets intersecting each other and then carrying on. This is more advanced and I will give more advice on this in the e-book.

Revise

7)      Now-why-did-I-put-that-there method – It is now important that you revise what has been learnt in your study sessions. Practise is the key but it is best done in short bursts just like the learning. One excellent way is to practise your memory skills at the same time and attach random objects to your revision. So, find things you know you are going to come across regularly like pens, drinks, the toilet (!), your handbag, mp3 player and so on. For each object now picture it attached to just one set of information you have memorised (bones of the skull for instance).

So for my distillation information I might attach a bottle of coke in my fridge. I really picture the image. Now, every time I go to get a drink and I see or use that bottle I will suddenly recall that I need to revise distillation information. The aim is to do so as quickly as possible – whilst I pour the drink for instance. This is like the traditional idea of sticking post-it notes up everywhere except that with that idea you can very easily begin to no longer see them or just read from them without really concentrating because you have done it so often. This method is improved further if you try to put objects in an unusual place where you are bound to see them and think “why did I put that there?” Then you will remember you have to revise that bit of knowledge! So go put your bag in front of your bedroom door when you go to bed. Then, in the morning you will have to move it to get out and instantly know you must recall your memory aid for something. Do it as you have breakfast or clean your teeth!

8)      Short note practice – I am very against the traditional method of writing out the stuff you memorised. No point and it just wastes time. It IS useful however, to make short notes. Bullet point writing means you get the important facts down fast. This is the key point really – how fast can you recall the information? When it is near instantaneous every time you do it then you know you have reached that ultimate goal of committing it to the long term memory. This should give you the confidence to know you will go into the exam and very quickly recall the information even though you may be nervous. The shortest notes possible then and in bullet point form.

9)      Exam practice – The final test is to try doing actual exam questions, preferably in a set time if possible. Work out how long a question should take and see if you can recall the information correctly in that required time. This is the only time you should be writing information out in full as you are practising time management, trying to make sure you can answer the question within the time limit.

10)  When you still can’t quite remember it – At any time along the way that you find you cannot recall the information properly, fully or at speed, go back to stage 1 again begin the process again. This time is should be faster, easier and more secure. If a memory aid has not worked properly, refine it or replace it with a better one. Sometimes two or three different pictures for the same think will help reinforce each other. I memorise around 10-20 Bangla words each day but as most of them only crop occasionally in conversation, the practice time I have for them is limited. I can reasonably expect that up to 80% of them I will have forgotten within a day or two. But each time I come to a word I have forgotten and look up its meaning again, I redo stages 5 and 6 reinforcing or improving the picture further. Eventually – and usually fairly swiftly – the word will stick with little time or effort used and I can feel a sense of progress being made even as I am still learning the word.

Well that is the short guide! As I say, I hope to get an E-book out before long which will go into more detail about each step, give lots of memory examples and tips along the way. The basic ideas here can be applied to most kinds of study – even learning an instrument or drawing! The key benefits to this method are:

·        The process is very swift and gets faster the more you use it.

·        It requires very little or no writing down other than the initial notes you made in lessons or from textbooks (and if you make this a well used habit, then in years to come I see no reason why you could not do away with making any notes at all – many have succeeded in doing this and can recall facts, figures or discussions from meetings held long ago with perfect recall despite not having photographic memories)

·        It makes learning fun (or at least bearable).

·        It enables you to link ideas together in a meaningful way helping you not just memorise but also really understand your subject.

·        It provides an easy approach to revision (in fact, by effectively revising all the time you should not find that before the exam you feel under any pressure to do extra ‘cramming’ at all) and builds itself up as you use it repeatedly.

·        You can learn multiple subjects at the same time without feeling like your heading is ‘bursting’ and it is all ‘falling out’ – a common problem for students who try to ‘cram’ information in. In fact, step 3 indicates that the more (and different) subjects you have, the better!

Maybe you have your own techniques for memorising? Feel free to share a comment about them here. Good luck with your own studying and I hope these tips give you the edge you need to pass that exam!