Some people, especially people in the second half of their life, refer to the "old school", where you were taught languages the hard way. I guess they mean that their teachers were heavy on the grammar book and vocabulary lists. Of course, this does not work if your aim is to speak a language with any fluency, but it seems that many people who have been taught languages like this are reluctant to use any other method. It probably has more to do with the love of the known and Angst before new things rather than efficiency concerns.