Word: rote
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What is really new about new math is the teaching; it is basically old math taught in a far better new way. The purpose is to replace numb learning of rote computation with a confident understanding of the structure and relation of numbers-the why of the drills. Rules and formulas are still vital tools, but new math aims to go back to the sources of the rules to show why they are valid, rather than blindly prescribing them...
Adult Sixth-Graders. Most Americans dread math because teachers have long used strong-arm drills to mask their own ignorance of the subject; even now more than half the states do not require a single college math course for certified elementary schoolteachers. Taught rote computation, children have usually lost all curiosity in the process. As an instance, most kids must still wait for third grade to tackle such "carrying" problems as 39 plus 3, even though first-graders can easily do it by counting 40, 41, 42 on their fingers...
Cardinal Cushing, presiding once more, seemed almost to hurry through the rote and ritual. Near the end, he blurted the words "this wonderful man, Jack Kennedy," into the midst of the stream of ancient Catholic prayers. A 21-gun salute boomed in the distance. Up the hill, three musket volleys cracked. A bugler began to play a perfect taps, then faltered twice...
Start a Latin American reformer talking, and he will begin reciting the region's needs almost by rote: schools, houses, hospitals - and, always, land reform. As his example of land reform, he invariably points to Mexico, where land and liberty, tierra y libertad, was the war cry of Emiliano Zapata when his peasant army sacked the giant haciendas and occupied Mexico City in the bloody 1910 revolution. In those days, 835 rich families controlled 97% of the country's cultivated land. But not for long. In 1913, leading a band of armed riders, Revolutionary Major Lucio Blanco seized...
...fixed upon issues of weaponry and strategy and turned to the military for support. The virtual assurance that violation would be detected, the right of withdrawal from the agreement, and the reassurances regarding inadvertant recognition of East Germany have made the argument about the scheming Red Russians seem somewhat rote and pointless, even to a few of the treaty's detractors...