Detailed comparisons between these concepts and ideas will be dealt with in the article, but first things first. You must have already made up your mind about one system being better than the other, and there is a great probability that you have chosen experiential learning as the superior method of learning.
You can partly attribute your choice to the powerful discourse surrounding you and partly to the way the context has been set up with the headline. Almost forcing you to make a choice.
The headline isn’t a psychology test. Rather, it is a reflection of how things and learning systems have been positioned and exist in the real world.
We all know how context shapes our attitude and approach. If you observe how the concepts of rote learning, memorization, experiential thinking, and critical thinking have been juxtaposed, you can’t help but think that experiential learning is good for critical thinking. Similarly, because memorization has been used with rote learning, you might tend to think that this is one method that needs to be quickly banished.
To have everyone on the same page. Some clarity on these popular modes of learning
Rote Learning – Method of learning where you memorize information by **repetition** rather than by understanding its meaning.
Memorization—A broad process of committing information to memory so you can recall it later.It involves techniques like visualization, associations, storytelling, mnemonics, spaced repetition, etc.
Experiential Learning- way of learning through **direct experience** rather than just studying theory or memorising facts. It’s about “learning by doing” and then reflecting on that experience to gain understanding.
Critical Thinking- It is the ability to carefully analyze, evaluate, and interpret information to make well-reasoned judgments or decisions. This involves evaluating, reasoning, and reflecting.
In terms of the correlation between these concepts, here is how they connect.
Repetition without understanding = Rote
Repetition with purpose, information retrieval & recall system: memorization
Experiential Learning + Memorization = Critical Thinking
Sometimes, memorization and rote learning are considered to be the same. They are not. The difference between rote learning and memorization is that of purpose and framework. All rote learning is memorization, but not all memorization is rote learning.
Does rote serve any purpose?
When we talk about rote learning, the visuals that come to our mind are those of mindless repetition without the understanding of the purpose.
While rote, for most, is meaningless repetition of facts, figures, and random words, it is noteworthy to remember that even uninvolved repetition breeds familiarity, and we know familiarity breeds likeliness.
Recall the mathematical table that we used to learn, perhaps without understanding the meaning of it, and the exact repetition of the tables meant that if the sequences were altered, we used to struggle. But there should be no denying that familiarity with the numbers did help immensely in slightly more complex problems, which we encountered later.
Benefits of Memorization
Memorization isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it is a very crucial learning tool. But memorization, when clubbed with rote learning, makes it a bad character in the story of educational development.
Here is what Ramon Matthews, trainer at the USA Memory Championship, has to say about memorization.
“Education is the ability to retrieve information at will and analyse it. But you can’t have higher-level learning—you can’t analyze without retrieving information.” And you can’t retrieve information without putting the information in there in the first place. The dichotomy between learning and memorizing is false. You can’t learn without memorization.
The focus on experiential learning and critical thinking in the NEP2020
The NEP 2020 emphasizes the aspect of experiential learning and critical thinking. But is it something that completely depends on extricating the ideas of memorization from learning systems? Not just in India, but also in the European and Western model of education, researchers have been pushing away memorization in favor of experiential learning.
Memorization and rote learning are often seen as the villains of the system, preventing experiential learning.
Do we have to choose one of the other techniques of learning? Not necessarily. In higher education, and in most professional and vocational courses, experiential learning has clear advantages. But in pre-college education and in higher education, where we need the foundation of reasoning, creativity, and critical thinking to evolve as much as possible, a lot can be achieved through the combination of memorization and experiential learning. In fact, memorization becomes key as experiential learning isn’t possible for all subjects, and deployment at scale is also a problem. Critical thinking and creativity are about linking disparate facts and ideas. The more facilities one has for making associations and the more facts and ideas one has at one’s disposal, the better one can be at coming up with new ideas.”
As Joshua Foer, a researcher on memorisation, says, “To invent, you need an inventory—a bank of existing ideas to draw on. Not just an inventory but an indexed one.”
