School Culture

Belinda Shaw: Learning by Rote

Belinda was born in Leeds in 1947. Her mother died when Belinda was just four years old and she was sent to live with another family. This traumatic event had a lasting impact on Belinda's life, and her schooling. Belinda attended mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Here Belinda describes the teaching method used in her school.

  • Belinda Shaw
  • Belinda Shaw
http://howwasschool.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/learning-by-rote.mp3

Transcript

Well I remember just a general – a lot of learning by rote, which I couldn’t – I can’t learn by that, I have to understand things, and this is where I used to get into trouble because if I used to ask a question about something that we’d been told to learn from the book, or from what the teacher had said, that was when I got put into staff detention and that particularly happened in Maths and Physics and Chemistry, but as I say I learnt Chemistry. And I remember thinking this just - I was in despair really ‘cause I wanted to learn, and I could learn things but I couldn’t learn just by people talking at me.