Rote Learning

izzop

izzop

izzop

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Hi,

Waiting for being shot down, or I'm a Troll, whatever or however......

Not having children of my own and after having a chat with both a 'Teacher' & parent, I'm told by both that 'Rote' learning is no longer used.

Instead pupils are asked to be 'creative', really?!

Being creative & not taught by Rote, how will it sink in?
 
The fault with rote learning is that it fails at anything after a school level.

One of the commonest things you see nowadays are students that were drilled in school with 'rote learning' techniques and various other 'effective' methods to get the top grade, but leave school with next to no critical thinking skills, 'creativity', initiative, etc. People from top-performing, fee-paying schools often go to university and find themselves in the bottom quartile of the class.
 
Well I imagine because rote learning makes no sense for the vast majority of subjects, it's just remembering information without knowing its meaning.

Rote learning is essentially brain washing, telling someone to remember something but not telling them why or what it means.
 
But really, does it fail after school level?

Don't get me wrong, I've seen the other side, where someone very highly qualified doesn't have the commonsense they are born with!
 
izzop said:
But really, does it fail after school level?
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Knowing something does not mean you can use what you know to tackle a problem. What is important is that you understand the information and its applications, being able to read sheet music does not enable you to write a symphony.
 
Fenris said:
Knowing something does not mean you can use what you know to tackle a problem. What is important is that you understand the information and its uses.
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Yes, very true, but if you don't know the something?

Surely, the uses comes later?
 
InKursion said:
The fault with rote learning is that it fails at anything after a school level.

One of the commonest things you see nowadays are students that were drilled in school with 'rote learning' techniques and various other 'effective' methods to get the top grade, but leave school with next to no critical thinking skills, 'creativity', initiative, etc. People from top-performing, fee-paying schools often go to university and find themselves in the bottom quartile of the class.
Click to expand...

Absolute cobblers.

Rote learning was the way things were done before calculators were cheaply available.

For instance, the reason I know that 6 x 8 = 48 is not that I've worked it out, it's that times tables were learned by rote as a mantra at school 35 years ago.
 
ElvisFan said:
Absolute cobblers.

Rote learning was the way things were done before calculators were cheaply available.

For instance, the reason I know that 6 x 8 = 48 is not that I've worked it out, it's that times tables were learned by rote as a mantra at school 35 years ago.
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I second that, I cannot see how maths could ever be 'creative', maths is maths....

Yes, where it's applied, might be, but it's all the same.
 
There are a lot of Maths and Physics problems that I wouldn't understand simply by rote method.

Isn't rote just incredibly boring? I don't know how any of "the older folk" could stand it. I can't learn well like that.


In fact I'd say it's creative thinking with a good understanding that's pulled me through my education and lab work thus far.
 
Transition towards free and easy access to information, people no longer need to remember large amounts of info, and require a much wider, but at the same time, more in depth knowlege of pretty much everything nowadays.

Learning by rote can only ever encompass a relatively small amount of information, whereas bearing in mind the above point, a focus on training people to access, research, analyse, condense and interpret the now easily available information is a much more practical method.

Take chemistry for an example, would you teach the child every possible permutation of every element, molecule and compound reacting with everything else, which would tend to infinity? or just teach them the rules to predict reactions and they can then apply those rules to each situation as it arises?
 
izzop said:
I second that, I cannot see how maths could ever be 'creative', maths is maths....
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I'm assuming you have never studied maths at an advanced level.

In my experience, rote learning is fine for when there is a need to call upon calculations that are considered basic arithmetic; such as knowing by heart that sqrt(25)=5, or Log(1)=0, or e^0=1, etc. It would be laborious to derive these standard equalities from basic principles every time.

It seems obvious to say, but this method falls down when a unique problem is presented. If I didn't understand how logarithmic scales worked (because throughout my school years I got away with learning by heart the Log_10 table) then how am I going to solve a problem which deals in logs to a base of 6, for example?

Particularly in discrete mathematics, I've found that having the ability to be 'creative' is almost essential.
 
I was at high school in the 80's and never learned anything by rote. Primary school yes, what level of education are you talking about?
 
Telescopi said:
I was at high school in the 80's and never learned anything by rote. Primary school yes, what level of education are you talking about?
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i would say this seems to be the best way. drum into primary school children the rote stuff, then at secondary school teach them how to interprate and apply their knowledge to practicle situations (be creative).
 
Times tables, verb conjugations, all these are still learned by rote.
Repeated over and over until it sinks in.
In the case of verbs this might be twice.

Rules tend to be rote learned, you can't creatively think how to conjugate a verb in French if you don't know the basic rules, and you can't conjugate the irregular verbs if you don't know them. There is no creativity involved, they just dimiss the word 'rote' and magically make it embed into memory by repetition.


One major change in schooling since I was there was the use of phonetics for reading, this is something I shall have to look into when I teach my child to read. I understand the concept, but not how to apply it in sounds.
 
I rote learn some things, such as trig identities, binomial expansion and of course a few physics formulae.
For the vast majority of things that I know, I do understand where they are derived from. And I find that instead of remembering three equations, I will just learnt the first one and derive the others from it.
 
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