Word: rote
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...NAEP document notes that the average Japanese high schooler does better at math than the top 5% of Americans taking college-prep courses. It blasts U.S. math instruction as "dominated by paper-and-pencil drills on basic computation" and by rote explanations from teachers too dependent on set- piece texts. Innovative teaching, lab work and special projects "remain disappointingly rare...
That idealistic sentiment began as part of the catechism of democracy, but through generations of rote it has degenerated into a kindergarten fable. Adults, of course, know the truth. The presidency is reserved for white men who have held high office and who have almost always avoided embracing a cause or expressing a sentiment that is far outside the mainstream of established opinion...
...election as Massachusetts Governor in 1978 largely because he raised taxes. For all Dukakis' unquestioned managerial competence, there are also hints that the blandness of his vision reflects a certain constriction of the soul. When he speaks of his passions (housing, education), he seems to be reciting them by rote. Dukakis has access to leading academic thinkers, yet he still repeats many of the same cliches with which he began, especially in his gooey rule-of-law foreign policy rhetoric. Still, he surrounds himself with competent people and inspires loyalty and trust. His trustworthy image helped him survive the revelation...
Stripped of its apocalyptic tone, what this amounts to is an advocacy of teaching names, dates and places by rote and providing a context later. Hirsch acknowledges that the method has been derided since Dickens satirized Pedant Thomas Gradgrind ("Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!") in Hard Times. But, he counters, "it isn't facts that deaden the minds of young children, who are storing facts in their minds every day with astonishing voracity. It is incoherence -- our failure to ensure that a pattern of shared, vividly taught, and socially enabling knowledge will emerge from our instruction...
Ashoka funds people in a variety of fields, ranging from education to medicine to waste managment, who propose innovative solutions to their countries' problems. Fellows include a Bombay woman who has established a system to replace rote learning in the schools and a Brazilian consumer activist...