Learning 'by heart' is valuable

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

. . . Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

-- William Wordsworth

I memorized and recited that sonnet in high school, nearly 60 years ago. I recite the first part to myself from time and time, and occasionally I remember the punch of old Trion blowing his wreathèd horn. It belongs to me.

Daniel Buck's middle schoolers love memorizing poetry, he writes on The Hill. "At recess, students who chose the same poem practiced them together on the swings. An otherwise meek little girl found her voice and recited her poem proudly before her peers. On presentation day, for one hour, we traded a classroom for Dickinson’s New England, Wordsworth’s Lake District, and Frost’s snowy wood."

When I was still teaching, as the school grounds filled up with snow, students came to visit me during my office hours and practiced their poems, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning with earnest concentration. Among the students, it became the most anticipated assignment that I gave all year.

Once it was common for children to learn and recite poems and great speeches by heart, he writes. In the 20th century, progressive educators have seen memorization as the enemy of thinking.

They didn't think it was important to memorize phonemes or the times tables, much less a Shakespeare speech or a Wordsworth sonnet.

It's a mistake, Buck argues. "From a purely utilitarian standpoint — before we even get to poetry — the memorization of the basic academic content is a necessary condition for all advanced thought."

While modern educators add "the modifier 'rote' to memorization, we once called this practice 'learning by heart'," he writes.

If you learn it, it's yours.

There is no thinking without memorizing, wrote Jon D. Schaff in 2023, when he helped develop new social studies standards for South Dakota.

His team called for students to memorize the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Critics said teachers should focus on "thinking skills" rather than content.

These "faddish educational notions" harm students, Schaff argues. "What is often derided as 'rote-learning' is actually essential to sophisticated analysis." We draw on foundational knowledge to think about concepts.

We had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution -- with correct punctuation -- to move from eighth grade to high school. Yes, I still know it.