Bob Franks
Past District Deputy Grand Lecturer
My experience is completely different. Once in a while I will mentor a new Mason who can remember what he's memorized several days later, but most do much better if we can get together for a little while every day or two.LOL , Now that's funny .
But on a serious note , as a teacher once told me , don't force it . Trying to commit lectures to memory day in and day out will cause burn out and/or frustration . When I was working on the OES initiatory work , I tried to force it , I worked at it everyday and nothing would stick , I was frustrated so I finally gave up and set it down for a while , when I picked it back up everything started to fall into place .
When I am refreshing myself on degree work , I will run through it either two days or the day before the degree itself and then forget about it . If I keep going over it and over it , I WILL screw up during the degree .
Now, I DO think that distraction is a valuable tool. I will get in a lot of non-catechism conversation, about personal stuff, about the origin and pronunciation of words like 'hele,' and about how Masonry works (or doesn't). I will also '2-track' the instruction: work progressively from the start of the catechism for a while, then distract with jumping to the Ob or the working tools, then come back to check what we worked on in the catechism, to see if it has migrated from registration memory to short term memory.
[registration memory is like looking up a phone number, then having to look it up again to dial again in 5 minutes]
S&F