On 'Rote Learning' in English

One of the most common, unexamined and lazy ideas in commentary about Irish education is that the Leaving Certificate is an examination that overwhelmingly relies on ‘rote learning’ and essentially tests ‘just’ memory.

Every time there is any controversy about an exam (which seems to dominate the media every June), this is duly trotted out by … well, not by the people who actually teach the courses but by everyone else: politicians, some university professors and lecturers, social media commentators.

This post is not about the idea of ‘rote learning’ itself (always a pejorative and unhelpful term, evoking the M’Choakumchild classroom of Hard Times) or what exactly is needed to get to that nirvana of lazy commentators, ‘critical thinking’. No-one seems to worry about so-called ‘rote learning’ when learning numbers or letters in primary school, or starting to play the piano. Instead, here I will consider how that pejorative label actually stands up in practice in Higher Level Leaving Certificate papers in my subject. I am not an expert in any other subject (though I still know more than the lazy commentators since I have worked for decades alongside colleagues who are experts), but I am definitely an expert in the English Leaving Certificate course.

There are plenty of grounds on which you can criticise this examination, and want it to be better (my analyses of Paper 1 and Paper 2 this year), but the idea that it depends on ‘rote learning’ does not stand up to examination. It doesn’t stand up to teaching it. It doesn’t stand up to being a candidate in it.

Here are some questions from the 2021 Higher Level papers (I’ll leave the Ordinary Level, but all the same points apply there). Now think about how ‘rote learning’ would help you answer them:

Paper 1 (Language).

You have two parts of the Comprehension section to answer (in 2021, temporarily, just one):

(1). Three comprehension passages, with three questions each. You choose one. This year we started with two sophisticated ‘adult’ Irish writers, John Banville (from his memoir, Time Pieces) and Doireann Ní Ghríofa (from her marvellous A Ghost in the Throat - my review). The third text was an edited transcript by a graduation speech given at Howard University by the late Chadwick Boseman. The questions after each passage were about ‘insights’ into what the author had written, personal responses on observations and features of language (narration, the aesthetic use of language, persuasion).

So just how would ‘rote learning’ help you with one of these? What exactly would you learn by rote to prepare? You could certainly learn off elements of the different forms of language, as shown in a text book or prepared for you by your teacher. That would seem to be a good thing to do for a start, and would not take long, but what would you do next? And how would rote learning prepare you for dealing with the sophistications of these authors:

(Banville): What is the magic that is worked upon experience, when it is consigned to the laboratory of the past, there to be shaped and burnished to a finished radiance?

(Ní Ghríofa): I watched the bees and thought of the poet Paula Meehan. I’d heard her describe how cherished bees were in medieval Ireland, when entire tracts of our Brehon laws provided a legal framework for their behaviour. Bees flew through the law and into folklore.

(Boseman): I don’t know what your future is, but if you are willing to take the harder way, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that is ultimately proven to have more meaning, more victory, more glory, then you will not regret it. Now, this is your time.

In addressing the imagery of Banville, the rich knowledge references of Ní Ghríofa and the rhetorical rhythms of Boseman, how would ‘rote learning’ help?

What would definitely help would be reading as much as you possibly could for years before you sat the exam, guided skilfully by your teachers, and practising writing in different modes, prompted by the excellent models of professionals. ‘Rote learning’ of vocabulary, the fundamental building block of language, would certainly be a waste of time: reading a lot over time is the only way to develop a rich writing style.

Then, a choice of three short directed compositions. A candidate has no chance of guessing what these will be. This time, a feature article in a newspaper (very specific: on the tradition of erecting statues, so an interest in and reading about current affairs would help); an open letter on social media about animal rights; a verbal pitch on becoming the graduation yearbook editor. Rote learning for that? On the other hand, plenty of practice at different genres of writing would certainly help.

Next, the major Composition, worth 25% of the entire examination (36% in 2021). There are seven titles, ranging from personal essays to short stories to discursive essays to an article to a speech to a fable or fairy-tale. How does rote learning prepare you to write an effective composition? Learn an essay off by heart? The personal essays in 2021 were about the significance of birthdays and the role of humour and laughter in life. Even assuming it would be a good use of time to learn off by heart an essay on one of those topics, and that then you hit the Lotto jackpot of ‘birthdays’ appearing on the paper, that is a recipe for formulaic staleness.

Maybe the short story would be a better bet? Go to Paddy Power for the odds on one of these appearing:

Write a short story, set in a railway station, in which a passenger off the overnight ferry from Fishguard in Wales plays an important role. Your short story may be amusing or menacing in tone.

or

Write a fable or fairy-tale, set in ancient Ireland, in which a bee or bees feature prominently.

Such prompts could well be criticised for their eccentricity, narrowness or artificiality, but they can hardly take the rap for being perfect targets for rote learning for transport nerds or apiarists.

There are effective ways to prepare for this task (reading widely, practising models and genres, researching and thinking about very broad and flexible topics - community and stereotyping appear in this paper too). But, ‘rote learning’?

Ah, so you didn’t mean Paper 1? So you’re saying that of course it’s literature that’s more amenable to rote learning?

Paper 2

Since I teach King Lear, and indeed most students in the country do this as a single text, let’s have a look at the two essay options on it this year:

i) Chaos and confusion are used to great effect throughout KL.

ii) A production of KL in which the characters of Kent and the Fool do not appear has been proposed. Discuss the reasons why, in your opinion, the removal of each of these characters would or would not diminish KL.

I do have an issue with the first of these (how are chaos and confusion used?), but just how is rote learning supposed to help anyone answer either of these questions effectively? Ah, quotations, the lazy commentators chant. At last we have something that Leaving Certificate candidates might memorise. But just doing that and slapping the quotations down on paper will not get them marks: they need to use this knowledge to answer specific questions (called ‘Purpose’ in the marking scheme). In other words, to use another favourite term of lazy commentators, they need to exercise ‘critical thinking’. And critical thinking is built on a knowledge-base. Answering that interesting and tricky question on Kent and the Fool requires a candidate to use evidence from key scenes, characters and, yes, quotations, to build up a fluent and convincing argument. 

While I’m on quotations, though, I should point out that ‘rote learning’ is a terrible method of learning them. Instead, over two years as it becomes clear that particular quotations are significant and useful, knowing them should be used as a generative process for understanding. For instance, here are some Quizlets on key quotations in Lear: the emphasis is on using these to explore central ideas in discussion in class or with a study partner, not ‘merely’ remembering them. And I have a series of retrieval exercises on key quotations in several plays (titled ‘Thinking about…’) for building up understanding. As you regularly revisit these quotations, and keep thinking about their significance in the text as a whole, not only do you remember them more securely, but you are building up a deeper understanding of the complex network (or ‘schema’) that is this great artistic work. In Professor Daniel Willingham’s famous words ‘memory is the residue of thought’.

All this is applicable to poetry too. Mind you, one ‘rote’ exercise that is useful is learning a (probably short) poem off by heart. Now you have a deep grasp of its rhythms and pacing, and you can select any phrase or line to use as evidence in your answer. You don’t need to worry about ‘recalling’ a quotation accurately, and you are less likely to drop in a couple of lines just because you’ve learned them, even if they don’t back up a point effectively (you can see that kind of use a long way off, like it’s painted in yellow highlighter).

Just one example from the prescribed poetry section this year:

‘Seamus Heaney transforms the familiar and the mundane through his powerful use of language, thereby enabling us to learn a range of profound lessons from his poetry.’

Rote learning? You could learn off quotations and a series of statements from a few Heaney poems and then regurgitate them on the day. You would get some marks for that. But unless you engaged deeply with the mundane, his powerful use of language and profound lessons, those marks will be limited, because you will not be writing Purposefully. I don’t think a great deal of that question, but it’s not one which can be prepared for by ‘rote learning.’

Alongside prescribed poetry, you have to write on an unseen poem (20/400 in normal years). In 2021 the Higher Level poem was Louise Greig’s ‘How to Construct an Albatross’. Read it here. What might you have ‘rote learned’ to prepare for this? A list of poetic techniques, perhaps, like alliteration, metaphor, onomatopoeia. In which case I’d say well done, as long as you were confident in applying these terms accurately when looking at a poem for the first time.

The other literature section is the Comparative Study. The high-level generative thinking needed for an effective answer comparing two or three different texts is exactly what ‘critical thinking’ is about:

Compare the reasons why significant social change does or does not occur within the cultural context established in each of at least two texts on your comparative course.

Here too you could learn some short quotations from key moments by rote; that would be helpful. But your marks will come from how deeply you compare, how rich and intelligent such comparisons are, and how pertinently you address the key terms in the question.

If rote learning is of virtually no help in preparing for the English Leaving Certificate, what is? For a start, effective classrooms with plenty of discussion, teachers who check for understanding and push their pupils to think deeply, lots of writing practice prompted by excellent models from teachers and writers, sustained years of wide reading.

Any commentators out there still want to stand by the idea that the English Leaving Certificate is an examination built on rote learning? Because it sounds suspiciously like it is being trotted out by, well, rote. Time to exercise some critical thinking.