Deborah Hill Cone: Sweat and swot - it's the only way to learn

I have been swotting for my first university exam in 20 years - and couldn't peel the potatoes afterwards. Photo / Thinkstock

Here is something I have learned this week: systematic variance is the deviation of the group means from the grand mean and an F test is a ratio of systemic variance to error variance. You're welcome.

Other things: it is easier to write fast with a fountain pen. When you feel like you can't stuff any more information into your brain, time for purple jet planes and black coffee.

I have been swotting for my first university exam in 20 years - and couldn't peel the potatoes afterwards. Writing in longhand rather than desultorily resting one's wrists on a keyboard is hard work. But that's not the hardest thing. The learning of facts by rote makes me feel like a muggins.

I am 45, I've had a career, this week I got voted on to my kids' school board, surely I'm missing some smart, quick method of learning all this guff without having to sit for hours and hours taking notes? What do you mean, there is no minion pig to do the gruntwork for me? There must be some trick to pass this paper without the tedious hours and hours of memorising types of criterion-orientated validity.

(Yes I know, I'm going to sling my yoga mat over my shoulder and talk about statistical equation modelling. Wanker.)

But the most important thing I've learned from this paper is not any sort of correlation coefficient. It's that there is no short cut when it comes to learning. This might seem obvious. But given the recent scandal about students cheating by getting other people to write their essays, I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks there should be a quick and sassy way to get educated without all the drudgery.

Politicians' rhetoric doesn't help. There is a mantra that gets repeated ad nauseam, that education is the answer, to social ills, whatever the question. There are campaigns to make education seem sexy: the university where I study shows its vice-chancellor cruising around in a sports car. (Why do universities advertise anyway? Couldn't that money be better spent on doing, you know, research?)

Education is not sexy. Maybe there are sneaky thrills in study but they are few and far between. By and large it is a dreary slog. The sooner you get okay and make your peace with the tedium, the better. But I suspect this message is not easy to learn for most people, especially those raised thinking everything should be boo-yah-baby whiz bang exciting.

We are continually being told modern life is about being creative and working smarter not harder. So the idea you have to sit down for eight hours and just study a textbook makes you feel like a dupe.

Creativity and business gurus are always telling us to be wild and crazy and throw out the rule book. But they don't mention that for 99 per cent of the time this is bollocks. An annoying book on how to be creative called Zing! says, "You find the magical. Others can sit at desks and study demographics." Well, actually, it is often the sitting at the desk dissecting the data that leads to the truly audacious ideas. In order to be creative you have to be very disciplined doing all the boring stuff first.

Thankfully, like most things that go in and out of fashion, rote learning may be on the way back in, just as "trendy educationists" have largely managed to get rid of it.

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics Des MacHale argued in the Sunday Times recently that remembering facts and figures leads on to true knowledge. The Spectator's Clarissa Tan, in a nostalgic piece about her own rote-learning education, contends discipline and structure must be inculcated - there is no shortcut - whereas creativity is often innate or inborn. I'm not sure I agree with her as I tend to think creativity can be cultivated - but I do know that the most exciting things don't betray the boredom that went into them.

Now, what is a regression equation, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?