I have never had to rote learn anything mental since at least mid childhood. I can't remember before then.
If it's something I need to do regularly, I eventually learn it through natural repetition while working towards the high level goal I was actually trying to achieve. Derivatives were like this for me. I still don't fully know the periodic table though, because it doesn't really come up in my life; if it's not something I need to do regularly, I just don't learn it.
My guess is this doesn't work for everything (or for everyone), and it probably depends on the learning curve you experience. If there are cliff edges in the curve that are not aligned with useful or enjoyable output, dedicated practice of some sort is probably needed to overcome them, which may take the form of rote learning, or, maybe better, spaced repetition or quizzing or similar. However at least for me, I've not encountered anything like that.
If I was to speculate why rote learning doesn't work well for me, I don't seem to experience a feeling of reward during it, and it seems like my ability to learn is really heavily tied somehow to that feeling. I learn far more quickly if it's a problem I've been struggling with for a while that I solve, or it's a problem I really wanted to solve, as the reward feeling is much higher.
If it's something I need to do regularly, I eventually learn it through natural repetition while working towards the high level goal I was actually trying to achieve. Derivatives were like this for me. I still don't fully know the periodic table though, because it doesn't really come up in my life; if it's not something I need to do regularly, I just don't learn it.
My guess is this doesn't work for everything (or for everyone), and it probably depends on the learning curve you experience. If there are cliff edges in the curve that are not aligned with useful or enjoyable output, dedicated practice of some sort is probably needed to overcome them, which may take the form of rote learning, or, maybe better, spaced repetition or quizzing or similar. However at least for me, I've not encountered anything like that.
If I was to speculate why rote learning doesn't work well for me, I don't seem to experience a feeling of reward during it, and it seems like my ability to learn is really heavily tied somehow to that feeling. I learn far more quickly if it's a problem I've been struggling with for a while that I solve, or it's a problem I really wanted to solve, as the reward feeling is much higher.