KUOW's Discussion About Rote Learning
KUOW's The Conversation had an interesting conversation yesterday about rote learning (the show was titled " Drill, Baby, Drill ?". Their guests were Dan Willingham, a cognitive psychology professor at the University of Virginia, and Cathy Thompson, the head of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment for SPS. Dr. Willingham wrote a book, " Why Don't Students Like School ?" which, according to the reviews at Amazon is quite good and recommended by the teachers who have read it. From some of the reviews: Willingham's basic theme is that, despite everything you've heard, nothing works to increase student ability like factual learning and practice. In fact, one of his first ideas is to point out that what separates the excellent student (or adult) from those performing less well is their ability to recall facts. The more facts you know about your subject, the more you can understand your subject because of significantly less energy spent on fa...