I recently read Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know. I marked a passage about memory. I am fascinated by memory right now, especially since attention and memory are so important in learning. I recently read an article that discussed how our attention spans are adversely affected by our social media lives, specifically short-form video. These ideas about attention in learning have a direct link to memory. I couldn’t help tying these two articles I recently read in The Atlantic: “The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films” and “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Although both of these articles relied largely on anecdotal evidence, I couldn’t help but tie them to my own similar experiences in teaching — the fight against cell phones, the constant strain on students’ attention in a 50-minute class, the need for instant gratification through short-form video.
But what is memory? Earlier in the school year, I read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, a science fiction novel, and The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent, an adult fantasy often recommended for romantasy readers. (I will say that I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this particular book in class, but my students do carry this book around, which is why I picked it up to read.) I linked these books (somewhat surprisingly) to What We Can Know. All of these books have quotes about memory that I marked, and I thought about how to use these excerpts to get students to think about memory and attention.
“Math is not thinking. Math is procedure. Memory is not thinking. Memory is storage. Thinking is thinking. Problem, solution." (p. 349) Project Hail Mary
“There are moments in one’s life that remain permanently distilled in memory. Some wither within minutes, and others are carved forever into our souls.” (p. 344) The Serpent and the Wings of Night
“Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times, other places and leaks it all over the moment in question. Its unreliability was one of the discoveries of twentieth-century pyshcology. that did not stop people from relying on their own or from believing in the recollections of others, if it suited.” (p. 83)
What We Can Know
These quotes all focus on memory in different ways, with PHM focusing on memory as a storage center, which it is partially, but it is also something that is flawed. And those flaws definitely affect our present, sometimes leading to misconceptions and misunderstandings, as McEwan’s quote notes. In Broadbent’s romantasy work, an unsurprising, romanticized (and oversimplified) version of memory is presented, an aesthetic that casts memory as either fleeting or permanent.
First, I would have students compare and contrast the meanings of memory in each of these quotes and explain which definition of memory aligns with how they think about memory. I would then have students read some texts about memory. AP Seminar — which I teach — focused on memory and nostalgia in the 2025 stimulus materials, which include Tier 1 scholarly sources, a personal reflection, and various articles on the topic. I might even throw in the two Atlantic articles and a scholarly source on the relationship between attention and memory. I would also bring in articles about memory and the criminal justice system: the problems with eyewitness accounts. However, reading some reflections, essays, and poems that explore memory and also attention deficits in connection with social media would be great as well. A Google search led me to some spoken word poems that could be used, as well.
In their writers’ journals, students could write poems describing a powerful memory, incorporating the knowledge about memory they learned throughout the unit. I love having students think about the construction of knowledge through different modes, so I would also have them collect questions for a Socratic seminar. Eventually, I would have them write an argument that takes a position on whether to limit teens’ social media use.
What are some potential texts you would bring to a unit on memory?
Leave a Reply