I liked this article because it was in direct opposition to my beliefs (based on my own experience) and yet it gave me a different point of view and convinced m

I liked this article because it was in direct opposition to my beliefs (based on my own experience) and yet it gave me a different point of view and convinced me that there was some truth and value there. I grew up in an era when we wasted a lot of time on mindless rote repetition of meaningless things (meaningless because we were not taught to understand them, only to repeat them). It was boring and useless. I learned by understanding and then applying that understanding. If you understood it, then there was no need to memorize something like f = ma because it was then obvious. But this is a whole new way of looking at it: >If m and a were big numbers, what did that do to f when I pushed it through the equation? If f was big and a was small, what did that do to m? How did the units match on each side? That's not thoughtless memorization, that's gaining understanding. But the author did it by active exploration via repetitively examining something from different angles. Not just rote repetition (doing the multiplication over and over again), but seeking understanding. So in a sense, the author is arguing in favor of teaching by emphasizing understanding, but explaining how to use directed repetition to do so. That makes a lot of sense. The key is that it is not mindless rote repetition, but directed, inquisitive repetition.