For many people, rote learning evokes recollections of Latin lessons, unending biological terminology, perhaps even the nine-digit U.S.postal zip codes. It may bring to mind the drudgery of elementary and high school lessons, even though rote learning was supposed to have been eliminated from so-called modern schools in most countries many decades ago. The word rote, a variant on the words route and routine, is defined by Webster's Dictionary as “learning mechanistically, by memory alone, or without thought.” As is evident from the scientific literature, memory often has been seen to have a dual and even paradoxical role in education: first, as a low-level skill that replaces thought, and second, as a basic skill necessary for all types of school learning.

The history of rote learning and memory is surprisingly rich and diverse. Prior to the advent of writing systems, keeping track of accumulated bits of information contributed to an increasing burden on human memory. The oral tradition, which relied on the individual's memory, helped promote the use of mnemonics or specialized strategies that improved on earlier methods of rote memorization. Yet one apparent cause for the rise of formal educational settings (where students are explicitly taught a given body of knowledge) followed directly from the fact that haphazard remembering was an inefficient manner of storing and conveying large amounts of information (e.g., Goody, 1977; Yates, 1966).