Accelerated training is far superior to long drawn out scheduling. I will
attempt to tell you why it is and why it works.

Long term memory is stored in various ways. There is implicit memory and
explicit memory.

Explicit memorys are memories that we can consciously remember. Most of what
we commonly consider "memory" is explicit memory. Answers we give on exams
are a product of explicit memory. Everything you know and remember is
explicit memory. These memories are recalled from cues and links to other
memories. Declarative memories are general factual information and Episodic
memories are personal experiances or based on an episode. The amount of
emotion involved has a great deal to do with its long term retention. You
can't remember what you ate last month, but you can (if you are old enough)
remember what you were doing when Kennedy was shot 40 years ago! or when the
Shuttle blew up on take off some 20 years ago. Also pleasureable moments are
stored better,Can you remember when ... you get the point. Things learned in
a pleasureable atmosphere are retained much longer. In an accelerated
learning atmosphere, you are concentrating on one thing, learning. All other
family stress, job stress, telephones, that normally cause interference to
learning are not present. Think about the once a week student that had a bad
week at the office and came in for a lesson and was thinking about all the
weeks worth of crap that just happened to him, he is trying to learn what
the instructor is saying but doesn't really learn anything. Accelerated
training just doesn't involve anything but a positive learning environment.
The student is learning rapidly and having an enjoyable experiance, which
reinforces the long term retention of the information. The plateau that all
students have when trying to land goes by so fast they don't get discouraged
and quit. The onece a week student gets discouraged when after three or four
or eight weeks go by and they still can't land the plane. They say I just
can't do this and quit. My students are usually soloing on the 3rd or 4th
day, and landing better than most of the commercial students from the big
141 schools that come into our little airport. This might be hard to believe
but it's true.

Implicit memories are memories that we do not consciously remember, which
influence our behavior, These are the memories that we instill by proper
conditioning. These are also the memories that come into play during an
emergency. Primal thought patterns that were injected correctly in the
beginning will come back with no thought at all. The conditioning takes
repetition for laong term storage. The decay rate of long term memory is
something also to consider. The average person will retain about 95 % of the
information presented by the next day. By the 7th day this is down to %80
and by day 10 it is %70. The positive reinforcement on the next day is far
superior to the once a week student. The average person can learn about 7
concepts per day, I generally only introduce about 5, then reinforce them
the next day and introduce 5 more. The understanding is important to the
long term memory retention so I discuss each concept to a depth that they
can apply, such as airspace rules. Don't just recite them to me , what does
that mean to you as a VFR pilot, how do you apply that information.

The other key ingredient is the instructor. He must be so passionate
about"TEACHING" not just a passenger building time. All instructors could
not teach this method, in fact i would say that most could not, from what I
have seen out there! Also all students cannot learn by this method, or any
method for that matter. Each individual has hei/her own needs and the
instruction needs to be taylored to that person. That is why I don't like
the 141 approach to cutting cookies. I do however use the course sylibus and
checklists from a 141 program to record the progress and be sure all
material has been covered.

I have taught many students to fly in 10 days, never had an accident or
insurance claim of any kind on any of my aircraft, and have produced very
competent pilots!
I hope I can get some of them to take a little time to come on line to tell
you of their experiance!

Cliff Manley
Perfect Planes, Inc.
www.perfectplanes.com