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Originally Posted by willx
I hate "rote memorization" and think it's absolutely useless. I remember a story one of my old professors told me about a friend that they had that made it through medical school because they had a near flawless memory and could remember a ridiculous amount of medical jargon .. but lacked any sort of critical analysis ability. They basically couldn't do their job. I think people need to be taught how to think. Like Philo 100-level courses: Critical Thinking and Logic & Reasoning should be mandatory at the highschool level.
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To be fair, I was kind of thinking elementary and middle school. Of course you have to do thinking in high school, how else can you write essays and analyze stuff?
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Originally Posted by Saintess
I don't hate rote memorisation because it has its uses and can be fun (I once challenged a friend to memorising pi - he hit 100 digits and I got stuck at 40), but I am quite disgusted that these people are those who often get scholarships or are the top of the class; yet they don't seem to care much about the beauty of the subjects they study and the utility of it. They are the ones destroying our world of science without the propensity to explore deeper.
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Eh, that kind of thing happens in the West all the same no matter what you do, it doesn't matter that we weren't ever forced to memorize anything more than the Pythagorean theorem and quadratic formula.
I read a short story once and thought it was interesting. I memorized it and recited it at least a thousand times since then, and now have a far better idea of what every little bit of its content means to me.