How many of us had to memorize Longfellow’s “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” in school? I remember having to listen to it 30 times over as each of my schoolmates recited it for a grade.
Longfellow was big at my elementary school. We also memorized “The Village Blacksmith” and “Hiawatha,” in addition to the “Gettysburg Address” and the Preamble to the Constitution. On top of that, many of us had scripture verses, creeds, and prayers we had to learn at church.
Was memorization important to my education? I don’t know, but I do know that even today when I see something that recalls a line in one of those poems, it all comes back to me.
So what happened to memorizing poems? Why isn’t it done any more?
I asked Sue Buckles, a Language Arts teacher who retired recently from the Tecumseh School District.
As Buckles explained, teachers have to concentrate more on skills needed for the achievement tests. Memorization still exists in different forms.
Instead of entire long poems, students learn specific phrases and memorable lines or parts of speeches. Lines in plays, of course, still are memorized in addition to multiplication tables, and important quotes from history.
“What we emphasize changes as we adapt to what is needed as the world changes,” said Buckles.
Kids today memorize different things. They know every word to songs, some I wish they did not know, and they love reciting lines from favorite movies. They also can text a message on their cell phones faster than I can type it on my keyboard.
Yet today as I look at the date above, I’m just hoping students will still know what happened on the 18th of April in 1775.
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