But, Barry Bonds and Miles Davis train to do one thing very, very well. For Bonds, it's hitting home runs. For Davis, it's playing the trumpet. I don't think their practice routines parallel the educational development of schoolkids.

School kids aren't specialized. If they were, then so-called drill and kill wouldn't be a bad idea. But, drill and kill probably doesn't help students learn to be life-long learners.

I'm not saying that repetition is always bad (multiplication tables, for example) but let's keep it in perspective.

Jeff, the best "life-long learners" are those people who actually know things and have a solid body of skills under their belt.

But if a school starts from a position of wanting students to be life-long learners (rather than wanting students to build skills and knowledge) than I feel this can only weaken the academic program. It then becomes really easy to excise things like drill and practice as not being part of the methods used at the school.

I had a student once in the remedial algebra class I taught at my university. She was a bright young woman who followed everything I did in lecture. She asked intelligent questions and understood what was going on and did her homework religiously. But she flunked my class because she could not finish the exams in the allotted time. When I had her in my office to discuss the situation, I discovered the reason: she did not know her multiplication tables fast enough to factor a trinomial or perform other related algebra tasks. It took her several seconds to recall each fact. When all you're doing is times tables, several seconds is not bad, but when you're trying to find factors of 48 that differ by 13, it is a serious liability.

This is the sort of damage that the "no drill-and-kill" position has wrought. I've had students actually physically shaking at the thought of not being able to use a calculator. I've had students in my office begging me to let them use a calculator because it's the only way they know how to add and multiply fractions. I've seen enough pathetic begging to make me angry at how these students have been shortchanged by their elementary school teachers. Teachers who, for the sake of some educational fad or fascination with using technology, failed to give their students basic skills. Teachers who, thinking they were getting their students excited about math, were actually kneecapping them and making it difficult for them to obtain a college education.

So drill 'em. Drill 'em all, I say. Drill 'em until they know what the hell they're doing. (And also do fun stuff.)

Let me think -- I did arithmetic drills every day in class from 1st - 3rd grade. They took no more than 15 minutes each day, and usually less by the time we got to 3rd grade. I did flash cards almost every night in 1st grade - for about 5 minutes. Then there were the spelling tests and writing tests, again just quick quizzes everyday.

This is supposed to be using up so much precious brain time it kills the soul of learning? It is very difficult to do anything higher level without constant practice. Perhaps that should have been made clear when I was in elementary school, but I, like the other kids, basically did it because it was required. And we got a feeling of accomplishment every day, because we were tested every day.

I am currently taking actuarial exams as part of my profession; I've gotten to the exams that require a bunch of memorization. Some people don't do so well because they try to cram it all in in a seminar right before the exam. Like all previous exams, I do at least a little every day, and the last month before the exam is nothing but review. Every single day. Even weekends. The ones who use this technique tend to pass the exams.

And we remember the material we learned longer than those who cram.