--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> While rote learning and imitation are not ends in
> themselves they are
> extremely important aids to learning when used
> intelligently. The
> worship of "creativity" in U.S. schools is more a
> side effect of
> capitalist ideology, which idealizes the "new," than
> it is an
> understanding of how to effect deep learning and how
> to nourish creativity.
I think that the worship of "creativity" is a side effect of the good old anti-intellectualism - a belief that "the people" already know what is important and they do not need to learn "high culture" - which necessarily requires memorization. Hofstadter (_Anti-intellectualism in the American Life_) argues that while this trope has been shared across political orientations in the US, it was the progressives who were largely responsible for introducing this anti-intellectualist anti-learning to school curriculum. Of course, the right has its own version (e.g. nicely portrayed by Sinclair Lewis in _Babbitt_).
But beside this one detail, I am fully with you on this issue.
Wojtek
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com