Memorizing facts was never the slam dunk in and of itself, but just a path to something greater, and I don't think that's changed. Think about the most obvious example - what we're doing right now: language. You can only fluently speak and communicate with others because you've memorized, to the point of complete subconscious mastery, a completely ridiculous amount of information and knowledge - thousands of words, countless grammatical nuances, cultural and contextual connotations/implications, and much more.
Imagine trying to speak without having this base of knowledge. Even if possible, you'd never be able to use the language in a comparable fashion. And I think this generalizes to basically everything in every domain. If you want to get good at chess, you need to study a ridiculously massive amount of tactics/patterns. If you want to get good at basketball, you need to simple practice dribbling and shooting a ball into a hoop for many thousands of hours, and so on.
The whole point of the memorization is to make it feel like it's not memorized. Like when you see these words, or come up with your own - it requires absolutely zero effort. There's nothing magical there. It's the exact same way that a master chess player can easily play a competent game of chess with 1 minute on their clock or while blindfolded.
If, and as, we start doing away with the rote, I'd expect we're going to see worse and worse outcomes. Arguably, this is already happening as Western education is continually 'rethought' while China rockets ahead of everybody with an education system that looks very much like a more centralized version of the US education system of 70 years ago.
Imagine trying to speak without having this base of knowledge. Even if possible, you'd never be able to use the language in a comparable fashion. And I think this generalizes to basically everything in every domain. If you want to get good at chess, you need to study a ridiculously massive amount of tactics/patterns. If you want to get good at basketball, you need to simple practice dribbling and shooting a ball into a hoop for many thousands of hours, and so on.
The whole point of the memorization is to make it feel like it's not memorized. Like when you see these words, or come up with your own - it requires absolutely zero effort. There's nothing magical there. It's the exact same way that a master chess player can easily play a competent game of chess with 1 minute on their clock or while blindfolded.
If, and as, we start doing away with the rote, I'd expect we're going to see worse and worse outcomes. Arguably, this is already happening as Western education is continually 'rethought' while China rockets ahead of everybody with an education system that looks very much like a more centralized version of the US education system of 70 years ago.