Rote Learning of Chinese vs Creativity

[hackinger]

Hi,

 

in the New York Times there is an article about a French Computer Academy called "42".

 

The following paragraph reminded me of this thread:

 

"The new academy promotes what many French call the Anglo-Saxon virtues of entrepreneurship and creative thinking, Mr. Niel said, whereas the standard French approach relies heavily on rote learning."

 

I am not sure if this is true, but one certainly can worry about rote learning and creativity even if one uses latin letters.

 

The article is here (not sure how long it will be available.):

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/world/europe/in-france-new-tech-academy-defies-conventional-wisdom.html?_r=0

 

Cheers

 

hackinger

[roddy]

The ironic thing about that is that it wasn't so long ago Britain's classrooms were full of students rote learning French. These are matters of education policy as much as culture. 

[imron]

Rote learning has a pretty bad rap in the west, but I think it has a place in certain situations.  For some things where creativity and inventiveness is important then yeah maybe it's not good, but for other situations, e.g. language learning, where there's less room for creativity and you just need to learn it, a dose of rote learning and drilling can really give a good boost to your skills.

[Guest realmayo]

I'm really taken with the idea that rote-learning as a child helps build you a better brain.

 

If more research backs that up, I'm sure rote-learning will be back in fashion before too long. Same way that butter is back and margarine is out 了。

 

Because there's no way that rote-learning in itself inhibits creativity. It is adults discouraging children from creativity that inhibits creativity. So it's not an either/or. Even the most free-sprited rule-breaking creative type will usually choose to drive on the side of the road that everyone else drives on.

 

Presumably though balance is all, and if teaching childen how to read and write Chinese requires massive doses of rote-learning, that should be balanced-out with self-consciously creative classwork too.