When singer Tony Bennett is in front of an audience he is the consummate performer, totally at ease with himself and the music. All of the effort, practice, voice drills and memorization that went into the performance are left behind and thoroughly concealed. He makes it look easy.
He may have left his heart in San Francisco, but he knows exactly where his talent and skills are. In fact, he has a favorite saying that covers his performance preparations and how important they are: “If I don’t practice my scales and voice exercises for a day, I know it. If I miss two days, the band knows it. Three days and the audience knows it.”
The discipline of a top-flight musician is remarkably similar to the discipline of a top-flight athlete, and Bennett’s timeline for the decay of his unpracticed singing skills is a near duplicate of the schedule of unexercised muscles. Apparently there is a natural “lapse rate” for these things.
There seems to be a lapse rate for knowledge and mental skills, too, and as our kids return to school it is very much on educators’ minds. Classroom teachers are concerned with the skills that have been forgotten over the summer and how long it will take to bring the kids back up to speed. Planners, researchers and budget officers are poring over data to see if year-round schooling is the answer.
Year-round school is an expensive answer, but if it solved the problem it might be worth it. Ultimately that is a question for parents and citizens to decide. What isn’t clear, though, is whether it solves the problem or just postpones it.
We don’t know half of what we need to know about lapse rates for skills. As a matter of practical experience, for example, the expression “It’s just like riding a bicycle” refers to a type of indelible learning experience. Once the skill is acquired it never really totally forgotten and can be recovered in a remarkably short time.
Other skills and knowledge more closely resemble writing in sand. Most of us might, for example, have a vague recollection of how to solve a quadratic equation. But if presented with an actual problem few of us could muster up much more than a furrowed brow and a fierce stare at a blank piece of paper.
The most recent math scores for Washington state’s K-12 students provide an illustration of the importance of lapse rates in evaluating test results.
Scores improved overall, and that is very encouraging.
One of the reasons for the improvement, though, was the new testing schedule. This time students took the test when they completed the course, not months or even years later as had been typical.
The change in test scheduling and its impact on scores brings us right back to the lapse rate question.
As the costs of education continue to rise, the lapse rate becomes an increasingly important puzzle to solve. What importance, for example, should we attach to skills that are quickly forgotten? Are they less important than those more lasting in our memories, or can quickly forgotten skills affect the way we approach and think about problems — and are therefore significant in our mental development?
These questions are important for employers as well as educators. If much of what we learn in school is quickly forgotten, what should employers look for in the educational achievements of their workers or of job applicants?
The traditional professions — law, medicine and clergy — have known for years, centuries in some cases, how important it is to maintain skills and refresh knowledge. In many cases, seminars and other professional education events are a requirement to maintain good standing in these areas.
Accounting has been a leader in professional development education, and other technically demanding areas such as piloting aircraft also require periodic examinations to determine the “currency” of their knowledge and skills. Private industry overall has also adopted similar processes to keep its workers, especially key people, sharp.
The quality of these skills and knowledge renewal and refresher training sessions and seminars varies widely, and their effectiveness is often questionable. Still, the growth of continuing education requirements represents an awareness that lapse rates play an important part in how effectively individuals apply the knowledge they have obtained through education.
Lapse rates play a part in individual educational costs, too. Freshmen and sophomore college students with lapsed skills or knowledge, for example, find themselves paying for remedial courses instead of earning credits toward a degree.
Whether skill and knowledge refresher methods should have a place in primary or secondary education is not known. What we do know, though, is that it is an expensive question to leave unanswered.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes a monthly column for the Snohomish County Business Journal.
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