[brutimus]

The highlighted response was bullseye hit of what I noticed going through college. The couple classes I remember it being most evident in were the very low level programming classes: Intro to Java/Javascript and a PHP class. These were the classes that pretty much everyone in the business school had to take.

People would work through problems assigned out of the book, but if they ever ran into an issue not specifically outlined for them, they were usually stuck. I spent many nights in the computer lab helping classmates through problems which just required stepping back and taking it one small step at a time. And even if they couldn't work through it on their own, they had no idea where to start on researching a solution -- they didn't know how to ask questions, etc. (Disclaimer: I nearly failed every damn accounting class I had to take, 5 in total I believe.)

I find myself being the exact opposite of what the linked reply states as being the 'norm'. I can't remember simple facts to save my life. I love playing guitar, but I can't memorize notes/chords. To this day I can't honestly tell you what a noun/pronoun/verb/adverb, etc are. Forget about people's names, it ain't happening. I find no real joy in reading fiction, I forget it all anyways. I couldn't ever remember the bajillion accounting terms I had to deal with in business school, but I loves me some calculus.

Also, he seems to point out "America" quite a bit in his response. I have a hard time believing this trend only applies to Americans. I'd like to hear either a non-American or someone with a little international time chime in on this.

[Tichy]

"I find no real joy in reading fiction, I forget it all anyways"

But that is good: you can read lord of the rings over and over again as if it was the first time.

[loup-vaillant]

I was taught programming at a (quite big) university at Toulouse, France. First years were taught Ocaml (Caml-light, actually). The first 2 hours took place in a lecture hall and were about the lexicon of the language: authorized characters, possible identifiers, keywords… A typical "by rote" course.

On my second year, I took a more specialized route. Among other thing, we were again taught Ocaml, as if we learned programming for the first time —which was the case for many of us. This time we were no more than 30. The first 2 hours directly jumped into expressions and functions. Much less to learn, much more to understand. Overall, this second course was faster, by a factor of at least 3. And the class understood it all.

Anyway, one aspect of rote learning we always had was the downgrading of our program in the case of minor syntax errors.