Should Children Be Assigned Poems to Memorize?

I think it's fine, as long as they have some choices. It's amazing how much one can memorize, if there's rhythm and rhyme!

Better Great Literature than Television Commercials.

True, though I memorized plenty of those, too. I could recite the Ballantine Ale for you now--and I haven't heard it in decades. Could sing it, too...

It has to be something that they want to do. I can remember straining to learn twenty lines of Shakespeare in seventh grade (a weekly requirement... that's at about age twelve) as well as all the Catechism answers. Three years later I was singing all the verses to "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Hey, Mr Tambourine Man" on stage in front of the same nuns who had had to line coach me through "To be or not to be...."

There was some severe eye-rolling going on there too.

Rhyme and meter is a convention of poetry only becuase it made memorization easy, back when there was no pen and paper! Poetry began as an oral tradition, and it's older than the written word.

SO, memorization can be a good technique (you know, just ONE poem won't kill you) as part of a lesson on scansion.

Yes. At least they will learn what they are capable of.

I think its fun sometimes, at least. Especialy when someone says something that reminds you of it and you recite it. Sometimes its inspiring.

Personally, I have a mind stocked with all sorts of poetic tags and couplets. The older I get, the more useful the lines and insights are.

It was much easier to remember things off by heart when we were children. I wish I'd been told to learn poems when at school as I'd be able to pop them out of my mind's filing cabinet whenever I needed them.

Sadly I now that filing cabinet is decidedly empty as I can't even recite poems that I have written without having them in front of me. Mind you, I've seen Wendy Cope giving a reading, and she also had to refer to her own work.

It's a bit like learning tables by rote. Okay we may not have understood them but we knew them. By the time we were old enough to know what they meant, "6 times 7" held no fears for us.

I think that it is a good idea, if it is not taken too far. I had teachers who made us memorize, ad nauseum. I think that too much memorization is a turn off. But used judiciously, I think that memorizing great poetry will stand a person in good stead later on in life.

Phoenix, Tarah--

My views of memorizing poetry alternate between the image of force feeding a goose (feet nailed to a board) for goose liver pate and packing a mental suitcase for the young and impressionable who are headed for an unknown destination.

Excellent images, Noddy.

My goose is definitely on the scraggy side.

YES YES and YES....i think memorization is very important. It is benificial for children to learn many skills while in school...and one of them is the art of memorizing. The best way to improve your memory is to use it. So the idea that - if had it not been for the requirement to be forced to memorize a poem (or two, or three....) then you would have more room in your brain for other information (which i will admit I often times shared this idea) - is untrue......I think where it gets sticky is which poems are required.

I think children should be exposed to different kinds of poems (along with books, songs.......) and there should be some room in choosing the poem to memorize. Children learn best when they are interested in what they are learning. And as a future teacher- i think that our children need help along their path to education...but we shouldn't force them- we should simply guide them.

Yes we should cos I am a child and I aint playing wiv ya

Memorizing poetry is all good and well if done in moderation...

Mind, memory, muscle and music:
- use it or lose it.

If raw memorization by itself gets to be too droning and one-dimensional,
perhaps if we engrain the words by using, referring to,
or analyzing the poem repeatedly.

I'd rather think through what a poem means 40 times,
gaining subtlety and insight each time -- and
then the memorization wasn't a direct force-feeding.

I dunno, whatever.

Yesssssssss




I agree, and learning to memorize at an early age will help them later on to learn their lessons and take tests. Which many of todays students do poorly in.

AE

I agree with Kendrajean and CodeBorg. Memorization of poetry at an early age is excellent exercise for the mind. I also think that the stress here should be on "at an early age." By the time one gets to high school, I believe, forced memorization should no longer be necessary. If it was done properly in the lower grades, committing important facts and words to memory should have become second-nature by then. It's amazing how much we memorize without being aware that we are doing so.

Re: Yesssssssss


This would be why I agree that kids should be taught to memorize some poems. I loved english classes, poetry and reading books, discussing, analyzing, etc. I have a very short attention span and cannot retain details well. My childhood memorizing of poetry and Shakespeare lines gave me an excellent tool for learning and exams later. I would read my lesson, break it down to an easy format (summarizing and attaching rhyming tools to help me remember the key points and then be able to expand these pointers back to the full lesson). This is how I got excellent grades ... and still do, even when I take exams or take classes now!

Apparently all that stuff I was forced to do at school was not so useless after all - whoodathunkit?