Is rote learning right for students?

Is ‘rote learning’ good for students? It is helpful to them when they have to write an examination and not explain what they mean, expounds SRIJAYA CHAR through her own personal experience.

I have never been an advocate of rote learning; but sometimes when I go back in memory to my childhood, when I had to learn certain things by rote, I did learn and to my astonishment, I remember them clearly even today.

I have been in various states from childhood and have learnt some poems in different languages of which I knew no meaning, but I remember them even today and think that rote learning has done me some good!

Is ‘rote learning’ good for children?  Of course as tiny-tots we have learnt nursery rhymes by rote. But it is difficult to say ‘yes’ to this question as a number of them may pounce on us to say that it is ‘not right’.

It was during the 1940’s. I was six and was about to be admitted in school. I needed to practice reading and I hardly knew anything except the alphabets and some three - four letter words. My aunt decided to teach me how to read a text before I stepped into the portals of the school for admission. She sat me down and taught me.

She had found out that they used ‘Blakie’s reader in that particular convent school where I was to take admission and she bought one that was prescribed for standard I.  She tried to make me read. I knew nothing and was flabbergasted!

What did she do? She told me that she would read five words at a time and that I should repeat what she read with my finger pointing to the words she uttered. I agreed.  And she started; “Mrs Martha Trumbles had been to Ashword…”

I repeated, “Mrs Matha Trumbles had been to Ashword…” “To do her shopping…”
“To do her shopping”.  She asked me to say this several times.. and I did. Now I could say “Mrs Martha Trumbles had been to Ashword to do her shopping…”  My finger would be pointing to the word that I was saying.

The whole paragraph was thus read and I repeated verbatim and learnt it by heart…
Yes, I was ready….

Mrs Martha Trumbles had been to Ashword to do her shopping..blah…blah…blah..
My sister who was about one year older than me knew how to read simple texts. So, she was not put into this exercise.

Both of us got ready and accompanied our aunt and grandpa to the school. I was given a reading test. To my good fortune she gave me the same text and the same first lesson.

‘Come on, read the first paragraph,” She said.

I sat down on a chair and put my finger to the words and reeled off, “Mrs Martha Trumbles had been to Ashword to do her shopping,...blah.. blah…blah.. “Okay,” said the teacher. “You can be admitted.”

Now, it was my sister’s turn. She was also expecting to be given the same passage to read, but ‘No’.

The teacher turned a few pages and gave her a new lesson to read. She looked at me askance. I just smiled.

She started reading. Read, she did, but of course she could not reel off like me as it was a new passage, a strange text which she had not seen before. She just put the letters and words together and read rather slowly.

“Okay,” said the teacher. “Your little sister seems to read faster than you.”
What we did not expect was that both of us, my sister and I were made to sit in the same class, standard I.

This is just a simple example. What is debatable is whether adults can memorize things that they do not understand. It is very difficult to answer this point. Once we become adults, it becomes very difficult to learn things by heart. But many times as teenage-students we have had problems with ‘rote’. There are certain sections of students who refuse to learn even scientific and mathematical definitions by heart.

They do understand the whole concept, but would rather not learn anything by heart. What happens then?  They fall into the category of losing marks in the examinations as the teachers would expect verbatim definitions and not explanations.

Starting from the rhyme ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’ to the principle of Archimedes in Physics, I have always scored more marks when I have reproduced them verbatim and not when I have tried to explain what they mean. So, perhaps ‘rote learning’ is helpful to students when they have to write an examination and not explain what they mean. 

Thinking of geometry and Euclid, his axioms and postulates seem confusing when they are put down after learning by heart. They need to be explained. For example, the axiom, “If equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal,” needs a bit of explanation with an example. But you’d rather just leave it as it is and not try to explain as it is confusing. So, what can you do but learn by ‘rote’? 

Physics and Newton, oh my God! Look at this definition, “A body remains at rest, or if already in motion, remains in uniform motion with constant speed in a straight line, unless it is acted on by an unbalance external force.”

Okay, if this is learnt by rote and reproduced as Newton’s first law of motion, you can be sure of securing marks. But when you try to interpret it with your own words (why? because you have understood it), you may go wrong with the meaning. So, why take the trouble to understand? Just learn it by heart!

Now let us leave these serious subjects and get into a lighter mood - poems and songs. These get into our minds without much of a problem because of their repetitions. 

We need not put too much of an effort into these as they are on our lips most of the time because of their popularity and repetitions.

Think of multilingual singers. Do they understand every word that they sing in different languages? Not at all! It is the tune, the notes and the lyrics.

May be, I am right wrong! I do not know where I belong. I am not for rote-learning, but of course, I do advocate it at some points.