PARROT PEDAGOGY: A CRITICISM OF LEARNING BY REPETITION Prof. Dr. José Ribamar Tôrres Rodrigues PhD in Education from USP Master in Education from PUC/SP Internship in Teacher Training at the IUFM of DOUAI/France Former Member of the State Board of Education/PI Former Coordinator of the State Education Forum Former Member of the MEC/INEP Appraisers' Bank Abstract This article aims to problematize the pedagogical practice based on the mechanical repetition of content, herein referred to as "parrot pedagogy." The critique stems from the observation that teaching methods centered on memorization without understanding promote superficial and decontextualized learning. In contrast, theoretical foundations are presented that advocate for more critical, active, and meaningful approaches, such as those proposed by Paulo Freire, Vygotsky, and Piaget. Based on a critical analysis of the repetitive model, the text argues for the need for an emancipatory pedagogy focused on the development of autonomous thinking and contextualized understanding of knowledge. Keywords: meaningful learning; critical pedagogy; rote repetition; traditional teaching; autonomy. Education, at its core, should promote the integral development of individuals, expanding their ability to interpret, transform, and intervene in reality. However, teaching practices based on the simple repetition of information, where students are treated as passive recipients of content, are still common. This practice, herein referred to as "parrot pedagogy," represents an obsolete model that reduces the educational process to a task of memorization and reproduction, disregarding the active construction of knowledge. However, it should not be dismissed entirely, as it is one of the initial stages of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, it is unreasonable for some to ignore it and deny knowledge. What is implausible is that professionals are unaware of this and blindly adopt discourses, meanings, and beliefs without any critical analysis. What is not plausible is that some education professionals embrace these positivist discourses that disseminate an idea as if it were the only truth and, even more serious, that these discourses, true pedagogical superstitions, begin to be followed and incorporated into their teaching practices. This mechanical process accommodates rote learning, which limits creativity, critical thinking, and knowledge production. Repetition learning is characterized by recurrent use of methods that prioritize the literal memorization of content, formulas, and definitions. While it can be useful in specific situations—such as when learning languages or basic mathematical formulas—its indiscriminate use compromises the depth of learning. The main problems with this model include: superficial understanding of concepts, difficulty applying knowledge to new contexts, lack of encouragement for critical and creative thinking, and student disinterest and demotivation. As Paulo Freire (1996) rightly warned, this model aligns with "banking education," in which the teacher deposits knowledge in the student, who then mechanically returns it through standardized assessments. Historically, the traditional model and the rote learning culture have valued the teacher as the holder of knowledge and the student as a passive subject. This model fostered a rote learning culture, in which academic success was measured by the ability to recite dates, concepts, and formulas without understanding their meanings or relationships. This type of pedagogy compromises the development of reasoning, creativity, and intellectual autonomy. When students are trained only to repeat, they become incapable of questioning, reflecting, or proposing new solutions—essential skills in the contemporary world. Critical perspectives on the process of meaningful knowledge construction are foundational to the work of several authors, including Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Paulo Freire, who advocate for a teaching model that values the active construction of knowledge. For Piaget (1975), learning is a process of assimilating and accommodating new information, which requires interaction with the object of knowledge. Vygotsky (1984), in turn, highlights the importance of social interactions in the learning process, emphasizing the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Freire proposes a liberating education, in which knowledge is constructed in dialogue with the student's lived reality. When students simply repeat what the teacher says without truly understanding, we have a rote-based teaching practice, where the student memorizes but doesn't understand. The name comes from the idea of a "parrot," who repeats words without knowing their meaning. This practice produces superficial, demotivating, and uncreative learning and ignores the development and improvement of skills and competencies, not only theoretical or pre-determined, but also contextualized and re-signified through the cultural processes of everyday life. Furthermore, it prevents students from applying this knowledge with positive results in different situations, as they tend to repeat patterns of practice, indifferent to the specific characteristics of different events or facts. This practice, which we call "Parrot Pedagogy," originates in Traditional Pedagogy, which has spanned centuries and undermines so-called modern (ACTIVE) Pedagogies as learning theories disseminated in educational settings. It is still incapable of changing teacher practice, not even in Basic Education, much less in Higher Education. We draw attention to the analysis of so-called Traditional Pedagogy as if it were an unacceptable practice in the teaching and learning process. It is important to understand that the pedagogy labeled "traditional" has its value in certain situations and that this approach was constructed in a given context, with specific meanings of a historical-cultural moment and, therefore, scientifically and socially legitimized. It is not possible for the hasty and irresponsible to adopt an isolated approach using references from the modern world. Pedagogical superstitions still persist, characterized by the belief that the teacher is the only expert in science and, therefore, the sole mediator of the learning process, placing the student in the position of a consumer, subjected to the requirement of guessing the answers to assessment questions: veritable "tricks" where only the teacher has the passwords to the answers, called the answer key. In this case, the student is considered learned when they get the answers right and repeat this content when required in the assignments and in the teacher's inquiries according to what is taught in the adopted textbook. But learning is not about repeating patterns, but about overcoming repetition through criticism, through the production of knowledge, through application in solving different challenges and through the understanding of new meanings. In this sense, science's contributions are varied and come from different fields of knowledge to explain the teaching and learning process. Among others, we can cite Jean Piaget, who argues that learning occurs through the individual's experiences in a given cultural context. Vygotsky emphasizes that learning is best learned through a process of collective construction, and Paulo Freire teaches that learning is a dialogic process with the world, where the student is the center. Teacher practice fosters meaningful learning when it challenges students through problems, questions, facts, and real-life cases that require reflection, doubt, creativity, research, and interactive processes such as debates, project development, interdisciplinary engagement with other areas of knowledge, and cultural instruments such as art, literature, popular literature, theater, and work outside the classroom. The tool of the knowledge production process is doubt, which must also be built into the relationships between teacher, student, social context, and available resources to understand reality—not only the reality perceived by the naked eye, but also the hidden reality revealed by collective critical reflection. Final Considerations What could be said, initially, is that "Parrot Pedagogy" does not favor the student's comprehensive development, nor the development of critical thinking. It is possible to say that overcoming "Parrot Pedagogy" can occur through the Pedagogy of Discovery, not based on another pedagogical superstition that leads everyone to believe that the student alone is the protagonist of the construction of knowledge and the teacher is merely a supporting actor, which we absolutely deny. Our position is that the teacher, students, and social context are the protagonists of the teaching and learning process, in a dynamic of alternating protagonisms in different learning situations. "Parrot Pedagogy" still persists, in its positivist approach, in many educational contexts and teaching practices, supported by traditional methodologies and assessment systems that reward memorization over understanding. It is necessary to break with this logic and promote pedagogical practices that value critical thinking, creativity, and the construction of meaning. Regarding these “rote learning” practices, many higher education institutions mask this process with a discourse of active methodologies when teachers follow contradictory teaching routines, executing mechanical learning procedures, programming students to answer standard repetitive questions. New historical-cultural contexts, throughout the evolution of social relations, have incorporated new approaches to teaching and learning that do not nullify so-called traditional pedagogy, but rather refine it and provide it with new elements to meet the demands of this new historical-social reality of the so-called knowledge society, characterized by virtuality, relativism, and complexity, among others: the use of digital technologies and interactive platforms with virtual learning environments, virtual reality and augmented reality, and artificial "intelligence." Also noteworthy in this scenario is the internationalization of academic curricula and bilingual classes. These innovations emphasize collaborative and interdisciplinary learning, curricular flexibility, microcertifications, dual certification in different bilingual contexts, the ability for students to choose subjects of interest, and training based on competency rather than content. In this sense, we also suggest an academic space where anyone can propose other activities or courses of personal and professional interest, parallel to the university curriculum, or simply require courses or subjects not linked to a formal degree, or take certain courses isolated from the formal university curriculum with certification as university extension courses. No less important, the university professional training process should promote integration with the professional and social reality, through the extension and development of projects, supervised internships, junior companies, incubators, and innovation labs that foster differentiated professional development for students. What we propose, in an innovative sense, is to extend the simple academic concern of focusing solely on professional training to strictly meet the demands of the so-called market. It is necessary to emphasize the urgent need for curricular extension activities in communities to form groups of community leaders who can continue the projects developed there, where the university can assume the role of ongoing support and monitoring as a mechanism for raising the living standards of the target population. Communities, transformed into objects or laboratories, can also participate in the results and use them as tools for transforming lives in a university-community-university dialectical process. Finally, it is necessary to overcome the contradiction between academic discourse and practice internally and externally. That is, within academia, between the discourse of innovation and the continuity of highly traditional and formal evaluation processes. Such processes must be diversified and measured on multiple scales, not only in terms of product but also in terms of process; not only in terms of writing, but also in terms of construction, expression, and application. Externally, the measurement and recording of individual and social progress, whose results can support the improvement not only of academic curricula, but also of the application and transformation of the local and regional historical context, is essential. Overcoming rote learning requires profound changes in teaching and learning concepts, as well as ongoing teacher training, improved assessment tools, and the mastery of technological processes by all involved, especially teachers. Only then will it be possible to develop autonomous, conscious individuals capable of collectively transforming the world in which they live. References FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 50th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 2021. PIAGET, Jean. The Birth of Intelligence in Children. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1975. RODRIGUES. J.R.T. Teaching Practice and the Construction of Pedagogical Knowledge. São Paulo: USP, Doctoral Thesis, 2001. ___________. J.R.T. Active Methodologies: The Expanded Classroom. In: SOUSA. Carla Figueira de. Et alii. Multiple Views on Education. Rio de Janeiro: Autobiography, 2020. VYGOTSKY, Lev S. The Social Formation of the Mind. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1984.