Carlo Columba

I’m actually reading the Technical Report “The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How
to Construct and Use Them” by IHMC. The paper is very rich about teaching practices and it is very very effective in dimostration of usefulness of concept maps in everyday learning. I conclusively agree with it!
Really interesting  the rote learning in comparison with the meaningful learning: I am not able to learn something if I don’t understand it, so I’m very concerned about the importance of meaningful learning. At the same time, it’s not possible to blind what Pennac describes in his book entitled  Chagrin d’école .

In his experience with disadvantaged pupils he was greatly helped by using memory processes. In his vision, if a pupils is discouraged and has no motivation, the memorization of chunks of text ( expecially poetry or something like that) provides that pupils with a sort of “learning tool”, a tool enabling him to speak in a certain way. The repetition, time after time, grows  self-confidence and intellectual patterns. The pupil understand he is able to learn, so his motivation grows.
May be, some times also rote learning may be a useful learning strategy.