Rote learning and drill

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

-Cicero

What is the role of rote learning in education? It is a common question I've found, whenever the subject of pedagogy comes up. In broad strokes, some (albeit, few today) hold it to be the primary means of acquiring "learning," whereby facts are conveyed from those who know them to those who don't. At the other end, you have those who see rote learning as the bain of a real education, squashing motivation and deadening the creative synergy of ideas and thought.

To put it another way, there are those who say education is acquired by drill, and others by play--that education is acquired, or created.

Such is the debate into which Annie Murphy Paul of Time.com enters with her piece, "Why Kids Should Learn Cursive (and Math Facts and Root Words." In it, she suggests the two ends of the debate are not so polar as typically imagined; that the contemporary pedagogical focus on "...collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking," ultimately rely upon memorization and drill to be effective.

Paul points to math skills as one example to highlight this phenomenon. Higher level math requires an understanding of simpler concepts, such as addition, division, fractions, and trig functions. Advanced mathematics tends to become easier when these simpler concepts have become automatic and easily accessible; which is to say one does't need to consult reference texts whenever confronted by a tricky problem. Drills which instill "automaticity" seem therefore to improve an individual's ability to learn more complex mathematical topics. 

Later, Paul also points to handwriting, argumentation, and audible reading as important exercises for developing automacity of basic skills of rhetoric and literacy. 

At its root, Paul's argument appears to be that so-called "progressive" pedagogical theories unfairly characterize rote learning as a method to "drill and kill" intellectual development in children today. While there 's something to that progressive criticism, I think Paul also makes a good point: that drill is useful, particularly for acquiring basic skills which make all other learning possible. 

For instance, from my own experience musical pedagogy is full of drills for the beginner, such as learning scales (major, minor), arpeggios, the circle of fourths--and if one is a percussionist--rudiments. Musicians often drill difficult passages, until playing them becomes automatic. They memorize whole concertos or sonatas, so that reading the music does not get in the way of performing it. Wind players do all manner of drills to improve their tone quality and intonation, and musicians of all types seem to do some manner of drill to improve their technique. 

One might find a similar instance in learning a new language. One learns vocabulary and grammar, and through practice becomes adept at using these resources to convey intelligible ideas in the new tongue. If words and rules are not easily accessible in one's head, I don't see how one could utilize the knowledge one has acquired. 

Now some may say a list of memorized words is nothing without an understanding of them, and that I think rings true. But it does not mean memorization cannot aid the development of understanding. For instance, as a little guy just starting elementary school,I learned to read when none of the acting roles in our church's Christmas pageant appealed to me. The only remaining role included a gospel reader, which involved standing at a big, shiny lectern and reading from the Bible. Now for an illiterate like me, the King James Bible came as a terribly confusing congregation of squiggles and symbols, and my young shoulders noticeably drooped when presented with this abstruse text from the Book of Luke.

But I worked on it every day with my parents, seemingly to no avail. So many new words there were to learn, and the sounds which parts of those words made. It proved a right, frustrating exercise in futility, but after a month or two of serious labor it became easier, and on the day of the performance I gave a decent reading of my excerpt from the Book of Luke. After the King James, I found I could read most things tolerably well.

The point is, acquiring the basic skills of literacy for me required a great deal of repetition and conscious drill. Now some may scoff and say, "Yes, you could read the words just fine, but did you understand what they meant, both as parts and as a whole?" To this I could only reply no, I couldn't explain exactly what I'd just read meant. But without knowing how to convert the written word into thoughts, reading comprehension would never come, just as with mathematics if one cannot convert abstraction into more concrete ideas in one's mind. 

From another perspective, consider learning how to drive an automobile. At first everything is novel, from the view of the driver's seat to the manipulation of basic controls while keeping a straight course on a lane of road. Early on, every action requires conscious thought, but at length many actions become automatic. Our minds get good at maintaining a safe following distance for instance, reading traffic patterns at a glance, and anticipating the actions of other drivers far in advance. While this automatcity can go wrong, much of the time it leaves us free to direct our conscious thought toward something else (e.g. following a complex route to someone's house). It also helps us navigate more complicated situations without becoming overwhelmed.

So ultimately, I don't think education is strictly the result of drill and rote learning, but I do think drill and rote learning can make a positive contribution to education. They make recall of relevant skills and information easier, and thereby make deeper forms of understanding possible. Practiced to the point of automatcity, actions requiring little conscious thought leave a mind free to attend to more complex things, such as performing a sonata with feeling as well as technical brilliance. To declare cooperation and creativity as superior to the rote learning and drill in education today therefore misses the point, because each support and nourish the other. Each is a tool, with the potential for utility if wielded with skill. This is not always an easy task.

“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.” -Cicero