Many years ago, when I was a teacher in a secondary school in Singapore, I used to teach my students some basic skills that I thought were important. These included mind mapping and the various memory systems. These are among the well-known accelerated learning techniques. Most of them were skills I had picked up through reading after I had left the university.  I remember then feeling that I wish I had known how to use them when I was in the university. It would have made life a lot easier for me as a student.

Even after I had taught them, I found that the students found it difficult because they would apply these skills only for my classes but not for the others.  The other teachers in the schools would still do things the traditional “school fashion” way. Only a few really determined students would actually use them fully and it was heartening to get messages from them about the usefulness of these skills later at the tertiary level.

Today schools in Singapore, for example, have as part of their enrichment programs, exposed students to these accelerated learning techniques. However, as in my experience above, it is almost never followed up by the teachers in the classrooms. Teachers still dish out prepared traditional, linear notes to the students and students become addicted to these notes. To be fair to the teachers, quite a few feel pressured by their supervisors to provide prepared notes to the students.

I believe accelerated learning techniques work. In addition to mind mapping, and memory systems, students should also be taught speed reading and even some Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques to help students get a better mind set for learning. These skills should be taught as core skills in any school.  Teachers too should be taught such skills.

But perhaps more importantly, these skills should be made the core of the study approach of the school. There is no point that these skills are learned and not put into practice. The school leaders must insist on their use by both students and teachers. In an earlier post, I had talked about note-taking skills as a fundamental skill of the independent learner. I will like to add here that all these accelerated learning techniques that I have outlined here are essential for the independent learner. Schools should shed their stodgy teaching and learning approaches and embrace these techniques. The usually heavy school curriculum demands it. The information explosion demands it. The new work place of the future demands it too. Most of all, do it for the sanity of the students immersed in an overloaded school curriculum.

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