In Defence of Rote Learning

For someone who hated it, it comes as a shock to me to defend rote learning today. 

Far be it from me to criticise the collective wisdom that guides the education reforms and processes of a state, but to play Devil’s Advocate, I don’t necessarily think rote learning is bad. Bad is also a loaded term in and of itself anyway. But especially here, with rote learning, “By-Heart System” as we call it, I believe it would be highly erroneous and simplistic to categorise it as “bad”.

I was never very good with memorisation. It always takes me longer than normal to commit things to memory. It is not entirely fair, then, that it is so easy for me to lose these memories too. So the few things I have indeed memorised, I cherish. 

I always think of Ozymandias when I think of rote learning. I memorised the PB Shelley poem because it was part of our syllabus in Primary School. The poems I first encounter in my college years are hazy now and I may recall a vague analysis here and there but that is it. In college, we no longer memorised. When I consider how the analysis of Ozymandias that was suitable for 10 years-old Me seems quite shallow when I revisit it today, I think of that proverbial home you can't return to, or the river that you cannot cross twice. They were right; the poem hits different now. 

This is exactly it – my defence of rote learning. It would never occur to me to revisit the poem if I can’t recite it from sheer memory. It is not analysis I experience with an Ozymandias musing; it is the poet’s words that have survived inside my head. These lines resurface in my memory and find new meaning in my adult life. Mere analysis could never.

I’m not saying the current system we have in Mizoram of rote learning is good. But in itself it is not the death of education. I know a ton of Australia trivia because I learned it via “Answer By-Heart” system in Class 6; I got a lot of detention for it too, @#$%^. I remember Times because of rote learning. True, if the teachers had ever even once explained to me that all numbers are abstract; and that when we say “za” it is in fact English and we are saying, for example, two twos are four and not two two za four, it would have made memorising easier. But be that as it may, even though I didn’t understand it, I memorised Times up to 12. I still retain most of it. It helps.

I mean, how many of us kids truly understood an “I wandered lonely as a cloud...” or a “Miles to go before I sleep...” or a “Do not go gentle into that good night...” but today, on this side of 30, feel it in our very soul? These are lines immortalising their creators. We remember them because we learned them in school. Because we memorised them. Because our teachers made us. Because it was important for year-end exams. Because those grades dictated our next steps. Some things can serve dual purposes, surprise surprise!

Exams and Grade Scores are not for everyone; I will never argue that they were. But a little competition never hurt. In fact, these healthy competitions become the things that toughen us. Competition is not bad. Schools that are good are good for a reason. I believe they will also still be good if the system changes. They are good because they know what the system demands, and they supply it. If the system changes, I am convinced the good schools by way of saying the ones that deliver “Top Students” will still be “good”. 

I attended three schools in Mizoram – Nazareth English School (Aizawl), Sacred Heart School (Lunglei), and Mary Mount School (Aizawl). They all competed competently at the state level. All three taught us things beyond textbooks. They taught us AV Learning, cross-stitching, public speaking, leadership, sports (yeugh!), patriotism, music, arts, etc. And yet, all of them also focused heavily on rote learning. Thanks to which I have a bunch of facts and art forever stored in my memory banks. I do not complain.

Sometimes I think there is something fundamentally off with our society where no matter how much education you can cram inside a child, Society with a capital S will cure them of it sooner or later. Society will always be the best and worst of us. Because our Society does not want individuals. It wants sheeple. And sheeple we all become in the end. We will always blow with the strongest wind. It is good when the winds are good and then we all become this giant good thing. But woe betide us when the ill wind blows. 

This is why we don’t learn. Instead of taking things into context, we reduce all debates to What Aboutisms and Over-corrections. It is always extremes with us; never a sweet mid. We throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Our education system needs correction, yes. But it is not Education System alone that requires it. There are so many moving factors at work that it demands a certain level of detached Non-participant Observation to point out the problems inherent and figure out ways to fix the holes. And not throw the baby out when we throw out the bathwater.

All of these to say that I, for one, do not think rote learning is inherently bad. Or even a ranking system. As long as we find a Mid-Point that works, and stop this maniacal fundamentalist mindset, we should be good. That applies elsewhere too, come to think of it.