America is a country that loves rote memorization. I remember in high school when I was hanging out with a few of the boys and watching sports, it was looked upon favorably if you could remember all the names of the players and trivial historical facts about the team and sport. It was seen as a sign of intellect and inferred masculinity. But, as I’ve come to learn, rote memorization is a lower order skill. It’s not unimportant by any means and it could be considered a foundational skill to higher order thinking, but the ability to recall a large number of facts will not get you as far as the ability to, say, create new and useful knowledge, which is the ultimate form of higher order thinking.
Yet, much like that sports experience, a large part of the American education system is founded on the principles of rote memorization, from standardized exam question styles that, for the most part, prioritizes the ability of the test taker to recall information to the healthcare education system that values the retainment of seemingly trivial facts, rote memorization is the law of the land. However, if we take a step back, this sort of makes sense. Higher order thinking is a process that requires great skill and perhaps a baseline level of high intelligence to achieve. We know that above average intelligence is both biological and derived from education and is, thus, relatively rare. Therefore, it makes sense that the majority of the population, who are not highly educated and of average innate intelligence would gravitate toward a more simplistic view of intelligence such as rote memorization.
The Ivory Tower 
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