[lbo-talk] In Praise of Rote Memorization

[andie nachgeborenen]

Professor friend of mine in college taught classical
lit, had her students memorize 40 lines of Homer.
Can't remember but I think it was in English.
Universally they said it was the hardest thing they
had to do in the class. Whereas Homer memorized the
whole thing, of course, as well as composing it in his
head. And in the old dyas -- say the Renaissance -- a
scholar like Joseph Scaliger would have the entire
classical corpus -- what we now think of the Loeb
library of little green books -- committed to memory.
Scaliger was extraordinary, but not in that respect.
Anyone in the biz would be able to pull out the
appropriate bit of Plato or Plutarch from memory.
Francis Yates describes Renaissance memory techniques
in her odd boo The Art Of Memory. 

I guess I disagree with Yoshie about teaching critical
reasoning -- it can't done on an assembly line basis,
but if you have small classes or a teacher whp takes
particular interest in you, as I did, you can learn a
lot about thinking in school. 

--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:


> Chris's friend writes:
> 
> > I think probably the single worst thing about
> Chinese culture is  
> > their education system, which emphasizes wrote
> memorization, with  
> > very little critical reasoning or problem solving
> skills.
> 
> American students can use a little more rote
> memorization and far  
> less emphasis on writing, writing, writing
> (everything from "personal  
> essays" to term papers).  Students shouldn't be
> compelled to write  
> when they have little to nothing to write about. 
> Otherwise, the only  
> tangible result of endless scribbling is to bore
> teachers to tears.
> 
> The very idea that "critical reasoning" is a "skill"
> that can be  
> taught in school (of all places), as if it were
> accounting or  
> something, is revolting.  You reason when you have a
> reason to reason  
> -- i.e., when you are up against a social problem
> you are interested  
> in solving in the real world.
> 
> 
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> 
> 
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>
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> 

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