\clip\98\14\rote.txt
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1998 18:29:02 -0400
To: 71524.2205@compuserve.com
From: Joan Battey <joaneb@spectra.net>
Subject: Rote Gets a New ID
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Status:  O


TO ALL:  Now that they feel rote learning has been sufficiently beaten into
submission, look at what is emerging as new and exciting.  Here's the
weekly "In The Classroom" from the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin today.
How does all this fit with the new edict that everything has to be relevant
to the world of work?
Not especially the relevancy of the rigorous social studies incorporated in
this nonsense.


"Ask any 5-year-old to recite the alphabet and, invariably, he will sing
the letters, finishing with the phrase, "Now I know my ABCs. . ."  A
10-year-old may not sing, but he or she will most likely recite the letters
with the same characteristic rhythm, pausing after the letters "g," "p" and
"v."


"Music helps us remember." [Can't have plain rote, gotta have music!]


"Students in sixth- and seventh-grade music classes at Chenango Forks are
learning an interdisciplinary approach to retaining information in other
subjects using music." [Now, please note how music falls by the wayside!]


"The students first learn how to describe music and poetry in terms of
tempo, rhythm and meter.  To demonstrate what they have learned, the class
shythmically performs two poems by Shel Silverstein, adjusting these
elements to enhance meaning." [You know how culturally-enriching Shel
Silverstein is!]


"Next, the music teacher obtains subject matter from the content area
teachers would like the students to learn and remember." [from all those
in-service and  in-school time diversionary times??]


"The easiest form of song for the students to write is a 'rap.' [Of course,
why didn't we guess??]


"Sixth grade classes have composed 'raps,' based on parts of speech from
language arts and the order of operations from mathematics.  These songs
are choreographed and rehearsed, culminating in a performance for their
teachers."
[More time wasted on something that could be learned in a much shorter time
and certainly without rounding up everyone for a PERFORMANCE -- as in Let's
Do A Show In The Barn??]


"Students are encouraged to incorporate material from more than one subject
area into their songs.  For example, in the parts of speech rap song, the
students included a term they learned in their social studies class." [Now,
get ready, you will need to know this term in whatever career-shadowing and
actual workforce training you enter, kids!]


"Now listen, everybody, to what we teach,"


"Today we're gonna learn about the parts of speech."


"A noun is a person, place, thing or idea -- like Jon, California,
chocolate or Pangaea."


"(Pangaea is the land mass that split into two parts 200 million years ago
forming Gondwana and Laurasia.)" [Of course, we were talking about that
just the other day at the office??]


Sixth-grade classes also memorize the 50 states in alphabetical order by
reciting them rhythmically using a 'lap, clap, snap, snap' motion to keep a
steady tempo. [Note that it's alphabetical, not in regions of the country
or not by being able to find them on a map??]


"Students in seventh grade music classes learn the rhyme scheme and the
guitar chord pattern of the 12-bar blues.  They are instructed to write a
12-bar blues verse based on information supplied by teachers.  The verses
are combined into a class blues song and the students accompany themselves
on the guitar."


"In the process of composing and rehearsing, the students internalize the
information.  Often, they can reproduce the entire song months later." [Oh,
really -- "often" but not always?  It's the process, not the information
and the correct answer.]


"The strategy of using music as a memory aid is so effective that it is
used extensively in the advertising industry. [See?  Everything is
market-oriented} If you can remember the ingredients in a fast-food
hamburger     -- 'two all beef patties, special sauce...' you can see how
the mnemonic power of music can be a valuable learning tool." [Except that
the 'two all beef patties was not sung, it was said -- just like rote
memory would have taught.]


[Just think, when all the cola wars are over, the students can be assigned
to write 12-bar blues jingles that will entice more people to buy more of
the winning cola in school, at events and at home.  The sky's the limit --
as are the school budgets and the opportunities for teacher in-service
seminars and on-going upgrading of teacher skills.  Just as the pits are
the limit for the actual knowledge that may "often be remembered months
later." Or not, as the case may be.]


JOAN