How a Rote Learning-Based Education System Stifled the Natural Writer in Me

Where I come from, rote learning is an educational tradition. Exam time routinely culminated in ad verbatim regurgitation onto the answer sheets. Those who regurgitated the best won academic accolades.

And I was the best of them — the gold medal still shiny despite the passage of time.

I would say my teachers were so rigidly set in their ways of grading papers that anything off the beaten track would immediately raise red flags:

“Who does this student think she is?”

“Is she trying to form an opinion!”

“There can be no room for such foolishness. This must be put down before it becomes contagious and puts ideas into other students’ heads!”

And thus I was forced to get with the program after a brief attempt at rebelliousness was effectively nipped in the bud.

“Memorization is a frontage road: It runs parallel to the best parts of learning, never intersecting. It’s a detour around all the action, a way of knowing without learning, of answering without understanding” — Ben Orlin

Perhaps it is difficult for products of Western education to comprehend this robotic method of assimilating information and its subsequent disgorgement.

I can’t for the life of me comprehend it either.

But you’d be surprised by the fact that this is the way the education system works in some countries of the world.

So there I was churning out the same bland, boring, safe essays — following the same format just as hundreds before me had. When I say safe, I mean writing nothing different, nothing controversial that would — god forbid send the teachers at my Catholic school into a hand wringing and head shaking frenzy, no thoughts as to why I agreed or disagreed about something or daring to offer any opinions whatsoever.

And that’s just the way ‘they liked it.’

School is supposed to foster the imagination, not stifle it in my opinion. Unfortunately, my schooling did the opposite of that by cramming my imagination into a box. Over the years, the different schools I attended continued to perpetuate the same thing as a result of which the box kept growing smaller and smaller until the budding writer in me gave up the ghost and died.

Culturally speaking, most people of my generation do not read for pleasure. That was a privilege for the highly educated, nerds, rich folks and, those looked upon as ‘slackers’ who had nothing better to do with their time.

However, reading the morning papers is not considered slacking at all. Being up to date on current events, especially on matters about politics is considered a matter of honor.

And things continued along these lines until I came to the US. This was by far the best thing that happened for me as a writer. Let me explain why:

For a person whose imagination was crammed into a tiny box, it was at first a bewildering feeling to be released from those four walls. I was surprised to find that students here were actually encouraged to think outside the box and here’s the kicker — they were appreciated for doing so!

I thought that to be very cool.

And so I began the process of unlearning years of playing it safe out of the fear of backlash to finally being able to unleash the hidden writer in me.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration when I say that I savor this freedom to write instinctively and in a way that is true to myself.

How did I do this?

By using this three-pronged approach:

Voracious Reading:

We did not have a well-stocked library at school back in the old country. What we had was a hall filled with aisles of books and periodicals from a different era that would have been more at home in an antique store rather than a school library. It will not come as a surprise therefore that our library did not cater to fiction unless you were into Shakespeare and other books that were strictly part of the curriculum.

Imagine my sense of awe when I visited my first library in the US. The clean, well-lighted reading areas, lovingly tended books, helpful librarians and the sheer amount of reading materials available literally had me in raptures.

Hallelujah!

I couldn’t get enough of reading authors I had always dreamed of reading but hadn’t been able to because firstly it simply wasn’t available where I come from and secondly even if it were, there was no way I would have been able to pay for it.

Alongside reading, I began observing the writing styles of my favorite authors, how they crafted their sentences and, their insights into human nature.

In her article, Julie Anne England clearly explains the importance of reading for upcoming writers “Reading allows you to learn from other people’s knowledge and lets you immerse in their world. It allows you to develop your writing style. Reading other people’s work will influence your own writing. This is because we tend to write in a similar way to what we read on a regular basis.”

Joining a Book Club :

Even though I spent more time listening than participating, the local book club gave me valuable insights into how a book was analyzed by its readers as well as a better grasp of ‘American speak.’

Gumption, anyone?

I still recall how our book club lead used the word ‘gumption’ and how I was the only one who had no idea what it meant.

And that word has stayed with me because I’ve realized that you need a healthy dose of gumption to be a writer.

Learning Creative Writing from an elementary school level:

I kid you not when I say describing the sky in English class at my old school could be perfectly summed up in four simple words “The sky is blue.” Nothing more was expected or required.

On the other hand, you read books where writers wax lyrical about an ordinary-looking blue sky. How does one go about replicating that? How could description entail so many depths, layers and, nuances?

It made me feel like all this time I was living under a rock.

An interesting snippet from an article published by artisiticstrategies.com explains why: “When children memorize and engage in rote learning, they limit themselves to what they have memorized. Imagine children knowing only 2 or 3 ways to describe sadness or happiness without exploring other possible ways or words to express these emotions. They can no longer experiment with the language themselves or learn from their mistakes when they do so. A huge part and parcel of a fruitful and enriching learning experience is having the agency to not only make mistakes but to learn from them as well.”

The upside was I became all the more determined to make up for all the years mindless rote learning had sucked away from me and expanded my imagination as to the myriad ways I could describe the sky.

I may have an advanced degree in Economics but I am not ashamed when I say that I went back to the basics in order to learn creative writing from the ground up.

If you asked me today if I have opinions, my answer would be you bet I do! I have opinions about many things because I not only read a lot about different topics but also think about what I read and form opinions that are no longer constrained by a box. This also gives me the confidence to be able to debate with the best of them should I feel inclined to do so.

Here’s the interesting part though, people of my gender from back in the old country think I have forgotten my place as a woman and men don’t know how to react to a woman who not only has an opinion but also has the audacity to question theirs.

It makes me wonder what rock they are living under.

Originally published on Medium