Word: rote
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many Japanese fear that in part the educational system itself is to blame. It has produced marvels of mass literacy (nearly 100%), but also of mass conformity. It rewards dogged rote learning, but not the kind of daring involved in making creative and unorthodox intellectual connections. "Every Japanese child," says one writer, "has a kind of invisible wire rack inserted into its body and mind," like flowers in an arrangement, like a bonsai tree. The Japanese examination system subjects the young to purgatories of cramming. It is one more symptom of a densely determined and obligated life, and some...
...paring the nation's swelling budget deficit, now $57 billion. The Prime Minister wants to transfer control of many state-owned companies to private hands. (At the top of his list: the Japanese National Railways.) On the controversial topic of educational reform, he proposes to end the system of rote learning and allow students greater flexibility in choosing colleges...
...rote work and rigidity in Japanese schools, says Dr. Takemitsu Hemmi, a Tokyo University professor of mental health, "produces a system in which students don't have to be able to discuss. They just say, 'Yes, I understand.' The system does not encourage great creativity or individuality." Admits former Education Minister Michio Nagai: "It is not an exaggeration to say that education designed to develop men who love learning and think for themselves has already been abandoned." Worried by a rise in youth crime and an increase in assaults on teachers (though the totals are still...
...father, a Pentecostal minister, played a number of instruments by ear, and her mother, a nurse, was also a pianist. Leona inherited their musical gifts, singing in the church choir and dabbling with the violin. As a senior in high school, she once learned an aria from Aida by rote, since she could not read music. To please a teacher, she auditioned for the music department at Oklahoma City University; to her astonishment, she was offered a full scholarship. In those days, she recalls, "I thought Moon River was serious music. Honey, when you're from Enid...
...extreme, Adler's The Paideia Proposal offers an impassioned but simplistic reminder of What Education Is For, Proposing that all high school curricula be revamped into a three-column, 12-year approach, Adler advocates attentive teaching of "acquisition of organized knowledge" (history, languages, science, taught by rote); "development of intellectual skills" (reading, speaking, problem-solving, taught by drill); and "enlarged understanding of ideas and values" (works of art and aesthetic appreciation, taught by Socratic discussion...