pazooter Blogic

Righting Rote by pazooter Rote learning has acquired a bad name in the United States. But is learning by rote , the process whereby students are made to memorize without consideration for comprehension, the baby that got thrown out with the bathwater? Historically, it's the Chinese who perfected the talent for rote learning . The master would give the statement to be learned and the entire class, in unison, would chant back the exact statement. Again and again and again until they had it memorized. Over the centuries it generally served them well. The downside was that, while Chinese students became highly knowledgeable and skilled in their cultural arts and professions, creative thinking was not, with some important exceptions, a common forte. It appears that in the United States, rote learning went the way of knuckle-whacks and butt-whumpings. Well-financed experts (i.e., not teachers) determined that comprehension was lacking and targeted most forms of force-fe...

It doesn't matter much which news source you listen to, they're all addicted to the, “ Experts say.... ” gimmick. “Security experts say malicious hackers have....” (CNN) “...what some experts say is a growing fear....” (FOX) And on and on ad nauseam. Undoubtedly they have well-explained reasons for doing this. One excuse is that much of their audience does not particularly care to be bothered by such details as sourcing. Much of their audience prefers to believe that the news personalities they read or listen to are themselves the experts who say.... The corporate news industry is very aware of this. “The most trusted name in news” is a CNN slogan often repeated. To their credit, they don't falsely advertise that they can actually be trusted to report honest facts. Instead they, like all other major news networks, have invested accountant-scrutinized monies into promoting their talking heads as celebrities. And they've hired the best stage designers, graphic artists, an...