> Lecturing from a book, or from notes, is sometimes the right thing to do,
I don't see how this can ever be useful. I grew up in the Middle East and attended an Indian School which followed the CBSE syllabus. There was nothing in the syllabus per se that inspired me to ask why. That came from my innate interest and from the occasional teacher who went beyond what was taught.
The focus was on rote memorization. You could be assured of excellent marks if you simply regurgitated what was in the text book. So if you were a moron, but had great memory, you could get 90%+ on an exam, but did you actually know anything?
In high school, I loved math but I never did well in the exams because I didn't really understand what I was applying and why. My high school teachers told me that I would do better in a western system of education that focused more on application than rote memorization. This was borne true a few years later when I started my undegrad in the US and aced my math classes. Although to be fair, my previous exposure to higher math definitely helped. But what I gained most from my education in the US was that I knew why I was doing what I was doing.
> The US system seems to overemphasize understanding.
I fail to see how anyone can overemphasize understanding. Understanding is the point of learning something. I still remember one of my friends memorizing Physics derivations. I once tried to ask her to explain one particular step and she had no clue why it was being done. She had simply memorized it. I sucked at that; I cannot memorize anything if I do not understand it
> That's biased. How can you challenge the intellect and question paradigms if you don't know them in the first place?
He's talking about the paradigm of rote memorization and conformity. In school I was frequently docked points if I restated my answer in any form that was different from the text book. It didn't matter that what I was saying was essentially the same. I didn't use the language of the book and so it was "wrong". How does that teach anyone anything? I still remember being terribly frustrated because I knew that my answer was right but yet I was being penalized because I hadn't regurgitated what was in the book.
Rote memorization may be helpful, but it cannot be the central underpinning of any kind of educational system. The idea of education is to understand what is being taught and apply it. Not just to memorize and regurgitate it without any regard for the meaning. Otherwise you're not better than a parrot that repeats phrases without any idea of the meaning or context.