Cleese, Rotely

My current read is an autobiography, So, Anyway...by John Cleese of Monty Python fame. The cover is the top half of his face, eyes wide open as though shocked, with blue feathers floating around him. If you get the joke you're a true Python fan. If not, you're missing on a bit of inspired humor.

The book is quite good in a very English way, and I'm sure I'll talk more about it as time goes on. But interestingly what has surprised and intrigued me most so far has nothing to do with comedy.

I has not known that Cleese taught school for two years before heading to Cambridge and what became a renowned career in a much more zany world than education, although education has become zany in a decidedly unfunny way. That too is a question for another day. 

What I was pleased to discover was that this man who I admire for his comic genius believes in a kind of education which I do too, an approach to education which is well out of favor these days yet I firmly believe ought to be widely employed in the schools. Cleese is a believer in rote learning, of drill and simply committing things to memory.

Make the kids at a young age learn the States and their Capitols. Make them learn the planets and their moons. Drill them on the multiplication tables. Have a large part of history classes a memorization of dates and events. Fill their heads with rote fact and detail. Why? Because it makes them learn to concentrate. It thus helps them think more clearly because they must appreciate detail.

It surprises me not that too many adults today can't think in nuance when they weren't ever taught to see detail. Knowledge has become about what we feel is true rather than a consideration of what is actually true. Drill and repetition, rote learning early on, is what makes us focus on the details which we need to understand if we are to ever comprehend complex situations.

I don't care for everything Cleese says (he appears to use psychology as a crutch in the same manner he criticizes the religious using religion as a crutch) and some of his humor is far too crude. But it was fascinating and rather a delight to find that he and I agree on at least one very basic need for our schoolchildren.