In the 40 years that I have been teaching, I have seen a lot of changes in the world of education. In my earliest years in the classroom, rote learning was the primary way that knowledge was transferred from teacher to student. Rote learning relies heavily on the repetition of material for the purpose of memorizing it. This teaching technique was widely used across all disciplines. Students memorized important dates and events in history class, entire music pieces in music class, famous poems in language arts class, and math facts and equations in math class.