Rote learning is a
learningLearning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning may...
technique which avoids understanding of a subject and instead focuses on
memorizationIn psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain, and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory....
. The major practice involved in rote learning is
learning by repetition. The idea is that one will be able to quickly
recallWhen discussing memory, recall is the act of retrieving from long term memory a specific incident, fact or other item. A temporary failure to retrieve information from memory is known as the tip of the tongue phenomenon...
the meaning of the material the more one repeats it.
Rote learning is widely used in the mastery of foundational knowledge. Examples include,
phonicsPhonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of...
in
readingReading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of deriving meaning and/or constructing meaning...
, the
periodic tableThe periodiс table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the chemical elements...
in chemistry, multiplication tables in mathematics,
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
in medicine, cases or
statuteA statute is a formal written enactment of a legislative authority that governs a country, state, city, or county. Typically, statutes command or prohibit something, or declare policy. The word is often used to distinguish law made by legislative bodies from case law and the regulations issued by...
s in law, basic
formulaIn mathematics and other sciences, a formula In mathematics and other sciences, a formula In mathematics and other sciences, a formula (plural: formulas or formulaeis a concise way of expressing information symbolically (as in a mathematical or chemical formula), or a general relationship between...
s in any science, etc. Rote learning, by definition, eschews comprehension, however, and consequently, it is an ineffective tool in mastering any complex subject at an advanced level. However, rote learning is still useful in passing exams. If exam papers are not well designed, it is possible for someone with good memorization techniques to pass the test without any meaningful comprehension of the subject.
Rote learning vs. actual thinking
Rote learning is sometimes disparaged with the derogative terms
parrot fashion,
regurgitation,
cramming, or
mugging because one who engages in rote learning may give the wrong impression of having understood what they have written or said. It is strongly discouraged by many new curriculum standards. For example, science and mathematics standards in the United States specifically emphasize the importance of deep understanding (
deep structureIn linguistics, and especially the study of syntax, the deep structure of a linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures. For example, the sentences "Pat loves Chris" and "Chris is loved by Pat" mean roughly the same thing and use similar words...
) over the mere recall of facts, which is seen to be less important, although advocates of
traditional educationTraditional education or back-to-basics refers to long-established customs found in schools that society has traditionally deemed appropriate. Some forms of education reform promote the adoption of progressive education practices, a more holistic approach which focuses on individual students'...
have criticized the new standards as slighting learning basic facts and
elementary arithmeticElementary arithmetic is the most basic kind of mathematics: it concerns the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Most people learn elementary arithmetic in elementary school....
, and replacing content with process-based skills.
"When calculators can do multidigit long division in a microsecond, graph complicated functions at the push of a button, and instantaneously calculate derivatives and integrals, serious questions arise about what is important in the mathematics curriculum and what it means to learn mathematics. More than ever, mathematics must include the mastery of concepts instead of mere memorization and the following of procedures. More than ever, school mathematics must include an understanding of how to use technology to arrive meaningfully at solutions to problems instead of endless attention to increasingly outdated computational tedium." -National Council of Teachers of MathematicsThe National Council of Teachers of Mathematics was founded in 1920. It has grown to be the world's largest organization concerned with mathematics education, having close to 100,000 members across the USA and Canada, and internationally....
, Commonsense Facts to Clear the Air
A December 2006 study of Tennessee State achievement analyzed scores in math, science, reading and social studies of about 4000 middle school students over three years. Students were divided on the basis of whether or not they had hands-on trained teachers. This study found increased scores in science, social studies and math for students who had a hands-on science trained teacher for at least one year.
Eugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
commented upon rote learning in his play
"The Lesson"The Lesson is a one-act play by Eugène Ionesco. It was first performed in 1951 in a production directed by Marcel Cuvelier . Claude Mansard played the Maid and Rosette Zuchelli played the Pupil in that production...
:
Pupil:In india many good students(with proper reasoning) die as they are criticised for not being good rote learners.
Professor: [...] unless you can comprehend the primary elements, how do you expect to be able to calculate mentally [...] how much, for example, are three billion seven hundred fifty-five million nine hundred ninety-eight thousand two hundred fifty one, multiplied by five billion one hundred sixty-two million three hundred and three thousand five hundred and eight?
Pupil [very quickly]: That makes nineteen quintillion three hundred eighty-nine quadrillion six hundred and two trillion nine hundred forty-seven billion one hundred seventy-nine million one hundred sixty-four thousand five hundred and eight ...
[...]
Professor [Stupefied]: But how did you know that, if you don't know the principles of arithmetical reasoning?
Pupil: It's easy. Not being able to rely on my reasoning, I've memorized all the products of all possible multiplications.
Rote learning as a necessity
However, with some material rote learning is the only way to learn it in a timely manner; for example, when learning the Greek alphabet or the
vocabularyA person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge.- Knowing and using a word :...
of a
foreign languageA foreign language is a language not spoken by the people of a certain place: for example, not only English but also Late Old Japanese is a foreign language in Japan. It is also a language not spoken in the native country of the person referred to, i.e. an English speaker living in Japan can say...
. Similarly, when learning the
conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
of foreign
irregular verbIn contrast to regular verbs, irregular verbs are those verbs that fall outside the standard patterns of conjugation in the languages in which they occur....
s, the
morphologyMorphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules...
is often too subtle to be learned explicitly in a short time. However, as in the alphabet example, learning where the alphabet came from helps one to grasp the concept of it and therefore memorize it. (
Native speakersA first language is the language a human being learns from birth...
and speakers with a lot of experience usually get an intuitive grasp of those subtle rules and are able to conjugate even irregular verbs that they have never heard before.)
The source transmission could be
auditoryHearing is one of the traditional five senses. It is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations via an organ such as the ear...
or
visualThe visual system is the part of the central nervous system which enables organisms to see.It interprets the information from visible light to build a representation of the world surrounding the body...
, and is usually in the form of short bits such as rhyming phrases (but rhyming is not a prerequisite), rather than chunks of text large enough to make lengthy paragraphs. Brevity is not always the case with rote learning. For example, many Americans can recite their National Anthem, or even the much more lengthy
Preamble to the United States ConstitutionThe Preamble to the United States Constitution is a brief introductory statement of the fundamental purposes and guiding principles that the Constitution is meant to serve...
. Their ability to do so can be attributed, at least in some part, to having been assimilated by rote learning. The repeated stimulus of hearing it recited in public, on TV, at a sporting event, etc. has caused the mere sound of the phrasing of the words and inflections to be "written", as if hammer-to-stone, into the long-term memory. Excessive repetition within a limited time frame can actually be counter-productive to learning, through an effect termed semantic satiation.
By nation and culture
The system is widely practiced in schools across
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
,
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
,
ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
,
MalaysiaMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia that consists of thirteen states and three Federal Territories, with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population stands at over 28 million inhabitants...
,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island city-state located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, lying north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands. At , Singapore is a microstate and the smallest nation in Southeast...
(which is often criticized for its inflexible education system),
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
,
RomaniaRomania is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory...
,
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
,
MaltaMalta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed European country in the European Union. The Southern European island nation is an archipelago that includes the inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a number of smaller, uninhabited islands...
and
GreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula....
. Some of these nations are admired for their high test scores in international comparisons with regards to other nations around the world. At the same time, progressive reforms such as Outcomes-based education which have put an emphasis on eliminating rote learning in favor of deep understanding have produced a storm of controversy as a generation of students are failing new math assessments which were aimed at increasing math performance. Some texts such as the widely controversial
TERCInvestigations in Number, Data, and Space is a K-5 mathematics curriculum, developed at in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The curriculum is often referred to as Investigations or simply TERC. Patterned after the heavily debated NCTM standards for mathematics, it is among the most widely used of...
completely omit memorization or even presentation of standard
elementary arithmeticElementary arithmetic is the most basic kind of mathematics: it concerns the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Most people learn elementary arithmetic in elementary school....
methods. Xiaping Li (2006) seminal work looks specifically to the effects of rote learning in second language learning in Taiwan. He notes Chinese learners hold high the tradition of rote learning as being an integral part of their culture.
However, in Singapore, with the introduction of the
integrated programme* Integrated Programme - an education programme in Singapore* EU Integrated programme - European Union Integrated action programme in the field of Lifelong learning...
, the government is obviously making attempts to move away from rote learning, at least for the more able students.
In the United States
New curriculum standards from the NCTM and
National Science Education StandardsThe National Science Education Standards are a set of guidelines for the science education in primary and secondary schools in the United States, as established by the National Research Council in 1996. These provide a set of goals for teachers to set for their students and for administrators to...
call for more emphasis on
active learningActive learning is an umbrella term that refers to several models of instruction that focus the responsibility of learning on learners. Bonwell and Eison popularized this approach to instruction . This "buzz word" of the 1980s became their 1990s report to the Association for the Study of Higher...
,
critical thinkingCritical thinking is assumed to be the purposeful and reflective judgement about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, experience, verbal or written expressions, or arguments...
and
communication Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. Communication processes are sign-mediated interactions between at least two agents which share a repertoire of signs and semiotic rules. Communication is commonly defined as "the imparting or interchange of...
over recall of facts. In many fields such as
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
and
scienceScience is in its broadest sense to any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome...
it is still a matter of controversy as to whether rote memorization of facts such as the multiplication table or boiling point of water are still necessary. Some education agencies which embraced the new standards are revisiting them in response to sharp criticism from those who believe that future generations should learn at least as much knowledge as previous generations have been taught, rather than just "how to think". It is countered that thinking skills alone will not be useful without a base of memorized facts to work with, and that it is quicker to recall from memory than to have to refer to a calculator, reference book, or internet article.
Development
In the
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
Arab human development reportThe Arab Human Development Report is an independent report sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme , providing leading Arab scholars a platform through which to analyze the challenges and opportunities for human development in the Arab Region...
for 2004 the Arab researchers claim that rote learning is a major contributing factor to the lack of progress in science and research & development in the Arab countries. Asian nations, though scoring well on skill tests, are also studying standards of nations such as the United States to increase innovation and creativity. Studies of math skill advantages of Asian students show them to excel in basic skills, but not in complex problem solving not easily solved with standard methods.
Religion
Many religions contain vast amount of scriptures, commentaries and even commentaries on classical commentaries. Rote learning is prevalent in many religious schools throughout the world. This is partly due to the fact that most major religions appeared before the emergence of print.
Most Dharmic religions such as
HinduismHinduism is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as ', a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law", by its adherents. Generic "types" of Hinduism that attempt to accommodate a variety of complex views span folk and Vedic Hinduism to bhakti tradition, as...
or
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
initially transmitted their scriptural knowledge through oral transmission without resort to text. This was done by converting verse into chant and repeating it to commit to memory. In Abrahamic religions, Jewish yeshivot or
chederA Cheder is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language.-History:...
im (plural of
chederA Cheder is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language.-History:...
) use rote learning when teaching children
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
, Muslim madrasas utilize it in memorizing Koran. A person who has memorized the entire Koran is known as
HafizHafiz , literally meaning 'guardian', is a term used by Muslims in modern days for someone who has completely memorized the Qur'an. Hafiz, however, traditionally is used for a scholar who has mastered and memorized 100 000 hadith complete with their narrators and chains of transmissions...
. In pre enlightenment Europe, memorization techniques were known as
Method of lociThe method of loci is a general designation for mnemonic techniques that rely upon memorized spatial relationships to establish, order and recollect memorial content...
, mainly practiced in monastery and university, where divinity were taught. These skills were highly praised and they were known to be extensive allay of memorization technique such as memory palace.
After the emergence of printing press, the memorization of the entire scriptures was no longer an essential requirement of being a religious teacher. Rote learning is still used in various degrees, especially by young children, the main purpose being to memorize and retain as much textual material as possible, to prepare a student for a more analytical learning in the future.
Music
This term can also refer to
learning music by earLearning music by ear is done by repeatedly listening to other musicians and then attempting to recreate what one hears. This is how people learn music in any musical tradition in which there is no complete musical notation...
, a practice used with those who cannot (yet) read musical notation. However, many music teachers make a clear distinction between the two approaches. Specialised forms of rote learning have also been used in
Vedic chantingThe oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...
to preserve the intonation and lexical accuracy of texts by
oral traditionOral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
. The Suzuki Method's underlying key is rote learning.
The Suzuki Method and rote learning
As outlined in Edward Kreitman's book "Teaching From The Balance Point", there is a clear difference between rote learning and learning by ear, which is in fact the more important skill developed by the Suzuki method. In chapter two, "Rote Versus Note", this difference is explained:
...I believe that we need to examine three different approaches to learning.
Learning by rote: Using a specific set of instructions to produce the desired result
Learning by reading: Using symbolism on the printed page to learn the sequence of notes
Learning by ear: Using the "mind's ear", together with a few simple skills and a basic understanding of the logic of the instrument, to figure out any piece
An illustration of these three approaches, and how they relate to learning music, follows. The author shows that rote learning is not in fact the principal means upon which the Suzuki method relies.
Learning Methods for School
The
flashcardA flashcard or flash card is any of a set of cards bearing information, as words or numbers, on either or both sides, used in classroom drills or in private study. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary, historical dates, formulas or any subject...
,
outlineAn outline or hierarchical outline is a list of items arranged to show their hierarchical relationships.In academic or scientific research paper writing, authors often use outline to visualize or plan the logical flow of a paper or argument...
, and
mnemonicA mnemonic device is a mind memory and/or learning aid. Commonly, mnemonics are verbal—such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something—but may be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Mnemonics rely on associations between easy-to-remember constructs which can be...
device are traditional tools for memorizing course material. The
flashcardA flashcard or flash card is any of a set of cards bearing information, as words or numbers, on either or both sides, used in classroom drills or in private study. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary, historical dates, formulas or any subject...
article presents a method called “efficient recitation with overlearning” or ERO (Himes, unpublished) that combines these tools. The section refers to study skill manuals whose authors made use of research and the use of recitation in schools before the mid-20th century.
Further reading
- Teaching From the Balance Point by Edward Kreitman
Edward Kreitman is an American violin teacher and widely respected Suzuki teacher trainer. He is head of the Western Springs School of Talent Education in Illinois and is the author of Teaching from the Balance Point: A guide for Suzuki Teachers, Parents, and Students.He studied with Roland and...
Internet reading link:
http://www.audiblox2000.com/learning_disabilities/rote-learning.htm