I want to say that this simply isn't true. I can't, though; there is a grain of truth to it.

However, I feel it's an oversimplification. "Repetition is learning!" No, no it isn't. I may be an anomaly, but I can tell you that memorizing times tables is not the same as learning how to multiply.

"Well, no. But after you look at how it works a few hundred times, you start to *learn how* to multiply."

That is, traditionally, how it's happened. I don't believe that's the essence of the mental transaction, however. The key is pattern recognition.

You've seen this before. The teacher shows everyone their times tables and one child can predict answers well ahead of the others. "Fast learner!" the educational system exclaims.

They've merely recognized the pattern before other people have.

The real key in it is learning how to recognize patterns. Once you learn to recognize them, you begin to learn to streamline the learning of patterns; you figure out how to pick out the important parts, how to test patterns out, etc.

My own experience with martial arts (which included said Shotokan kata, coincidentally) is part of how I came to this conclusion. The trick is not so much the repetition; that was merely how it was done, and how it has always been done, and likely will always be done. The key, as in every other enterprise, has been figuring out the essentials of the pattern and then embellishing upon it once you've got the essentials down.

Repetition serves two purposes; it exposes you to the patterns within the actions, and it (rather surreptitiously) forces away those unwilling to be disciplined in their actions. It's not necessary, by any stretch.

Most of the time, if you've got several examples of something and you compare and contrast them all against each other, you can get effective notions of their patterns.

Note that I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with repetition. It just shouldn't be confused with actual learning. You can learn while repeating, but you don't have to repeat while learning.

-----------------------
You are what you think.

In reply to Re: There is more cargo where that cult came from! by chaoticset
in thread There is more cargo where that cult came from! by hsmyers

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