STUDENTS LEARNING BY ROTE

There was a time long ago when children used to chant and they loved doing it. They would sing songs and recite poetry as a class. Schools particularly in the lower grades were alive with the sound of music and chanting.

Children learned their multiplication tables forever and ever by chanting with the class. I vividly recall sitting on the verandah of our school with a teacher at the head beating time on her chair with a ruler.

Four twos are eight. Two fours are eight. Four into eight goes two. Two into eight goes 4. Bruce Copeland stop looking over the rail. Whack. 

Four threes are twelve. Three fours are twelve. Four into twelve goes three. Three into twelve goes four…….and so on day after day.

But we knew our tables by the time we were 8 years old. My daughters in PNG are 14 and 13 years old and still do not know their tables by rote. How can they do arithmetic if they do not know their tables?

Then we had mental arithmetic. The teacher had us do calculations in our heads with no making notes. When students had the answer, they put their hands on their heads. All hands on heads? Answers down.

I go into a shop. I buy 4 oranges at 22 cents each. I buy two writing books for 58 cents each. Bruce Copeland stop writing. I can see you.  I buy tea for 45 cents. What change do I get from $10? Goods were cheap in 1955. And there is no pound sign on my computer.

In some crevice of an educational institution, a group of teachers decided that rote chanting was a lower form of learning. This is what is known as the lemming syndrome.

The children had to learn their tables by conceptualizing whatever that meant. Kids stopped knowing their tables.

In earlier times, children had to learn poetry by rote. That may have been their homework to learn a poem. It was not difficult. Many of us would get our mum to hear us while she cooked the evening meal.

Reciting poetry gave a group of students the experience of reciting language with rhythm, rhyme and modulation. Singing songs has the same effect. It is by this approach that students internalize patterns in any language.

I recall my young son Damian who came home from school with new learning. The class was being taught Swahili. His dad worked at the RAAF School of Languages teaching Tok Pisin and was delighted.

Say something in Swahili son. Sorry dad we only write it. The look on his father’s face gave away his sadness. Learning language by writing. What next?

But then singing and reciting poetry ceased to be part of school curriculum because it was too……something.

There are churches that promote reading the Bible among the flock and having them memorize appropriate verses called memory verses.

There is a church school in Port Moresby that has this requirement among the students. This adds a touch of class to education that suffers from the banning of rote learning.

But students have to conceptualize the Bible not learn it by rote. They do that too. That is what they call Bible study.

But students today learn by rote. That is how they pass their exams. But they do not chant. They study until they know the facts.

My mother used to say that as a student in the 1930s, she had to memorize the capes and bays from Cape York to Cape York down the east coast and back again via the coast of Western Australia. That may be stretching things a little too far.

But rote learning can be a valuable discipline that has gone the way of the dodos and dinosaurs.