Rote Wisdom

A recent article at Commentary, "The Unbearable Bleakness of American Schooling" (long, but *really* worth reading), decried the corruption of public education across the past few decades.

One observation:

The students learned their lines by rote with no real understanding of government or politics,

flashed me back to my college days. Among the residents in my dormitory were two young men, one born-in-USSR and one born-in-China. Both described education in their birth-lands with the same word:

"Rote."

Rote is memorization and regurgitation.

Rote offers no insight.

Rote discourages doubt.

Rote allows for neither discussion nor questioning nor criticism.

Rote 'teaches' nothing apart from blind obeisance and subordination to a "higher authority."

In a totalitarian society, this is a feature, not a bug, of the system.

In a free society, however, it is anathema. What good is knowing a chunk of words verbatim without understanding their meaning or concluding their worth via critical thinking? How can one appreciate the merits of those words, or their wisdom, unless one has both the means and opportunity to judge them?

One of the great ironies of modern education is embodied in the various 'critical theories' at the core of modern pedagogy. A wise fellow noted that the "theory of critical theory is simply to criticize," yet criticizing Critical ______ Theory in an academic setting is a sure path to poor grades and pariahdom.

Instead, Critical ______ Theory is presented as fact, to be learned by rote the way the value of Pi or the year of the signing of the Magna Carta (do they still teach that?) are learned. The *wisdom* of Critical ______ Theory is presumed, not demonstrated, and students are taught to believe they are imparting that wisdom to others via rote repetition. Rush Limbaugh, love him or hate him, introduced the word "dittohead" to the vernacular, and younger people have a similar concept in the NPC meme. This is what "rote wisdom" is. It's not individual insight that has weathered the razors of scrutiny, it's Orwellian mantra, intended to drown out dissent and stack the deck in favor of the elite few who'd reshape society to suit their (repeatedly disproven and failed) theories.

Kids should be taught how to think, not what to think. Moreover, they should be taught to question everything, with an expectation of understanding the merits of those things, should such exist. Rote learning, and the concomitant presumption of a single ‘correct’ worldview, is the very opposite of all that, and has no place in a society built to advance human liberty.