

Why is Google rewarding rote memorization? - amichail
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/congratulations-eric-yang-winner-of.html

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planck
Because geography matters: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMm-OwKy5t4>

What's wrong with recognizing the winner of a geography bee? "Rewarding rote
memorization" would be handing out prizes for reciting digits of pi, not for
answering geography questions.

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ZeroGravitas
Rote Memorization gets a bad rap.

What I object to is people pretending to educate you, when all they are
looking for is memorisation and regurgitation. And because they can't admit
that's what they're doing, they don't bother teaching you useful mnemonic
techniques to allow you to do it better. It's the worst of both worlds.

And in this case, based on the example questions, it's not simply rote
memorisation since you have to orientate yourself based on the clues to get
the answer, you're not just calling it from memory as you would a capital city
or river length statistic.

