“what need you being come to sense
but add the half-pence to the pence
and prayer to shivering prayer until
you’ve chilled the marrow from the bone?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone
Its with O’Leary in the grave”

(if memory serves)

and the most concise comment on the nature of fanaticism

“too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart”

Re: Football songs of by heart. Of course, the brain naturally remembers unrepeatable things like naughty limericks, dirty song lyrics and secrets!

I do think you’ve raised an important issue about Learning by Rote and its importance in Creativity though.

Modern educational methods reject rote-learning as it might crush ‘creativity’, but Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘The Story of Success’ examines the secrets of success in various fields and claims creativity (the spark of genius) comes from 10,000 hours of practice! So perhaps rote-learning has a very important part to play in creativity?

I find it maddening that primary school children are not taught essay planning (presumably because it might lead to boring essays) and are then expected to write like Shakespeare when it comes to exams!! How can you break the rules, unless you know what these rules are in the first place?

As someone who has benefited from an British overseas education (where rote learning played a big part), I think UK Plc’s creativity is in very great danger of being completely submerged under this new liberal wishy-washy curriculum. Britain is amazing in the Arts, particularly film and theatre (where rote learning
plays a major part), but less so in maths, technology and science. Perhaps going back to learning the basics by rote might reverse this trend?

Sorry, seem to have gone off on a complete tangent.