Is learning by rote bad?

Question

Is this type of learning appropriate in today's schools?

Answer 1

No it is not bad. Yes it is appropriate in today's schools. You must have some basic information stored in your own head... but of course you also must learn to manipulate/compare/contrast and do something with that info.

also memorization is a type of exercise for the brain... kind of like an athlete doing strength and flexibility training.

Answer 2

People have many different ways of learning. Rote learning is just as good as other kinds of learning, but like most things in life, balance is good. People often benefit from a variety of teaching techniques. People are often engaged in rote learning, but it's often better disguised. Look at the hours or days people spend playing video games. After the first few exposures a lot of it is just reflexive activity improved by repetition, although increasingly mindless as the brain becomes accustomed to the pattern and hopefully seeks new challenges. Unfortunately often with this kind of reflexive conditioning moral decisions are delayed or eliminated by the speed at which choice has to be made, in the case of video games.. people don't have to think about the true consequences of killing, for example.

Answer 3

It has a good value into today learning Rote learning is a learning technique which avoids grasping the inner .The major practice involved in rote learning techniques is learning by repetition, example of this learning time tables, However, in many fields, especially mathematics and related disciplines, this can often produce poor results.

Answer 4

Rote Memorization is just that. You memorize something. And... do we remember everything? No, we forget things. If we don't constantly use something, it is gone.

However, learning a foreign language, learning the alphabet, requires rote learning.

I personally don't like to use rote learning in my 2nd grade classroom. We have to for some things, like Spelling words and some vocabulary, although I try to use the Spelling words and vocabulary words in context and in various ways, so it isn't just memorization. I have seen the negative affects of rote learning in these ways, because kids will ace the Spelling test, and the next week while writing in their Journal, they'll misspell one of the spelling words they knew last week.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_learning:
Though rote learning is usually not necessary there are many reasons why people resort to it. Bad teachers is one of the key reasons. Some teachers do not know the subject themselves and hence are unable to explain the essence to their students. This is a major problem that plagues higher education especially in India where the teachers at colleges are usually poorly trained. Many teachers also criticize innovative methods of problem solving thus discouraging the student, who eventually resorts to rote learning to please the teacher.

Some teachers are forced to ask their students to memorize because the board, which conducts the final examination, expects a particular answer. If this answer is not given then the student may lose marks. Another factor that makes many teachers encourage learning by the rote is that these external examinations may be corrected by people who themselves have little knowledge about the subject and may penalise the student for not writing the exact answer as is mentioned in the answer key. Again this problem is very prevalent in countries like India where the number of students writing the examination is very high, making it virtually impossible to standardise the correction process.

Many times, especially in countries where education standards cannot be enforced easily, the question papers are set in a way that encourages learning by rote. The students who try to understand the subject are considered to be wasting time because the paper can be cracked on the basis of rote knowledge only. This encourages otherwise diligent and intelligent students to resort to rote learning, even though they may be capable of understanding the subject.

In addition, rote learning is also exercised by many Muslims to learn the Koran by heart in Arabic. Since the language is foreign to many Muslims who learn the holy book, often the focus is on memorising rather than understanding - especially since many learners are of a very young age.

A second explanation is that rote is the teaching, the incorporation of material into one's consciousness by repetition, by patterning, as it were. Rote is the teaching of abstract concepts by reference in a context rather than explanation, and the teaching of concrete information by practice.

Cultures which practice rote usually also have practices of harsh consequences to unsuccessful learning, and by proxy, such harshness has garnered rote a bad reputation.

Rote learning is active teaching and active learning (versus passive computer based/education-aid based teaching and learning, which has now been shown to pejorate education). Both the teacher and the student must participate in the drill, whether by writing or by speaking, and so the brain powered required to meet the processing on a multitude of levels makes for a better educated teacher and pupil.

Answer 5

I used to think of so, despite the fact that later in life I hit some factors the place it replaced into rather no longer undemanding and draining to attempt and "exhibit" my heart to God, and that i felt such dissappointment over un replied prayer. Then i attempted some "rote" praying of the Lord's prayer and another prayers written down. For me it has helped and that i don't experience it extremely is meaningless.

Answer 6

Yes, one still needs to memorize and file information into their long-term memory. I can do math problems in my head more quickly than those with a calculator because I have memorized my math facts, for instance.

Answer 7

Are we living human kind or a desk-top artificial intelligence on planet earth?
Do you like to be just like a desk-top?
Just feed the garbage of ghostly kitchen's ghost stories and ghostly modern history of failures and horrors of the graveyards on planet earth.
Observe what went wrong out there on planet earth.
With all the Mummies running and walking the streets on planet earth.
Communicating like a desk-top too on planet earth.
Do you understand what Orson Wells was trying to warn living human kind being screw-up by Mr. Big brother on planet earth.
Do you understand what Nostradamus too was trying to warn living human kind on the rise of the Mummies from the grave yards on planet earth.