Word: rote
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This is especially evident in Scheiner's direction which is not so much inept as it is unimaginative and rote, sort of the directorial equivalent of painting by numbers. Many bad cliches are used in this production--from the overture pantomime of Tessa and Gianetta (five minutes watching the two girls place flowers in baskets oh so carefully) to the set staging of the chorus. When Casilda is holding a rose during a bittersweet love song, you know she will drop it at the end. She does. The evening is full of things like that too depressing to recount here...
...behavioral sciences. Washoe the chimp and Koko the gorilla became famous for their linguistic feats using sign language, but scientists argued bitterly over the significance. Did the "speech" of these animals reflect a genuine ability to think symbolically and communicate thought, or was it largely the result of rote conditioning or of cuing -- a la Hans -- by trainers? Skepticism carried the day, and researchers who had dedicated their lives to working with the apes saw their work dismissed as a mere curiosity. So chilly was the climate that many young researchers left the field...
Some scientists, particularly those from the behaviorist school of psychology, take a more skeptical view. What looks like language, they say, may be simply mimicry or rote learning. One of Herman's critics, animal behaviorist Ronald Schusterman, insists that before anyone can say an animal is speaking, they had better determine whether the beast is capable of the kind of abstract thinking that forms the basis of speech. "My argument is that the language experiments have moved too fast," says Schusterman. "They have not looked at some fundamental cognitive abilities that give rise to linguistic abilities." At Long Marine Laboratory...
Science instruction at Harvard certainly emphasizes understanding over rote learning as evidenced by the importance of problem sets and the prevalence of open book examinations. Science at the college level is abstract by nature rather than design because the goal of science is to explain concrete observations by universal principles. Science is elitist only in that it rewards results. Furthermore, the ugly corollary is that increased participation by historically under-represented groups can only be achieved by watering down science education...
...plan will focus on ability to lead and manage more than on rote learning that produces top people on exams," said Reeves. "Exams do not leave police managers and leaders...