The problem starts with an educational system that stresses rote learning instead of creativity.
There is plenty of rote learning, discrimination against low-caste children, grade inflation and sometimes flogging.
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The education style is rote learning, heavy on facts and figures -- not on analysis or interaction.
This is due partly to the weight put on religious instruction and partly to the emphasis on rote learning.
Delegates claimed that its emphasis on core knowledge was a throw-back to rote learning and uncreative lists of facts.
This will put pressure on teachers to rely on rote learning without understanding.
Martin Allen, a delegate from Ealing, described it as a "know your place curriculum", based on rote learning and "social control".
He adds that there is a risk that both teachers and pupils return to instrumental methods and follow rote learning procedures prematurely.
This might be true in China, where so much of the educational system is still harsh, authoritarian and based on rote learning.
Futaba create games that can be played up to four people to help with reading, mathematics and other more rote learning concepts.
China's education system - and the exams in particular - have been much criticised for enforcing rote learning and memory skills, rather than creativity.
But Japan is littered with barriers to risk-taking and innovation, from an archaic education system that fosters rote learning to bureaucratic impediments such as restrictions on firing workers.
For decades foreigners teaching in the region have criticised (or admired) the docile obedience of their pupils, their propensity to rote learning and their reluctance to ask questions.
For the past 15 years Brown has been on an advisory board to the government of Singapore, which has mandated that schools move from rote learning to group problem solving.
But the traits that made it an economic powerhouse in the 20th century easy capital, big companies, rote learning, management by mandarins and stable jobs for male breadwinners are ill-suited to the 21st.
There were no significant differences in performance between the groups at the start of the study yet TRNS was found to improve the speed of learning for both calculation and rote learning tasks.
Listed on the New York stock exchange since 2006, its founder Michael Yu (also known as Yu Minhong), became a multi-millionaire on the back of his blend of rote learning exercises, stand-up comedy and motivational speeches.
Under the Saudi Education Ministry's method of rote learning, these teachings amount to indoctrination, starting in first grade and continuing through high school, where militant jihad on behalf of "truth" has for years been taught as a sacred duty.
And I think that that requires more than just rote learning -- although it certainly requires good habits and discipline in school -- it also requires that in the classroom they're getting the kind of creative teaching that's so important.
Much-vaunted educational achievements become rote-learning and a refusal to question those in authority.
Yet, despite the great success of its education system, Singapore has been reforming it to lay less stress on rote-learning and repetitive tests and more on self-expression.
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Schoolchildren love his wry poems about spelling, learning by rote and other hardships of education.
Hong Kong is aiming to get away from its old system of learning by rote, in which pupils were endlessly drilled for a few very academic exams.
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