Reply to New educational standards in Georgia and Arkansas - hope you’re paying attention, FCPS

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[quote=Anonymous]Here are some letters to the editor in response to the piece in the OP:

I am happy to read that Georgia and Arkansas have reinstated memorization of great poetry and speeches in school, though not without opposition from “modern educators” (“Kids and the Power of the Spoken Word” by Mark Bauerlein and David Mikics, op-ed, June 15). My college writing instructor asked all his students to memorize poetry. Even at that time, such rote learning wasn’t fashionable. But over the decades, reciting the poems I committed to memory has provided me entertainment on long road trips and served in conversation as proof of my erudition—or at least my willingness to bore other people.

More seriously, it gave me the words for feelings and experiences that I have had over the years, enriching my life as a source of amusement, comfort and inspiration. Having the words themselves in my head has been infinitely more meaningful than some teacher’s analytical (and possibly ideological) parsing of those words.

John Ninomiya
Sedona, Ariz.

My grandfather, John Jamieson, was born in Scotland in 1890, when education relied heavily on rote memorization and recitation. He had to leave school at 13 to begin working but continued to learn all his life. He could recite classical speeches, long poems or entire acts from Shakespeare’s plays, and always had an appropriate quote.

In his final years, Pop lost his hearing and finally his sight, but his mind was still sharp. In that world of darkness and silence, he entertained himself by recalling all those famous words he had learned, beginning as a young child in school. Surely that was not, as modern educators apparently believe, “empty repetition, mechanical and prescriptive.”

Susan Jonas
Danville, Ky.

Memorization is vital in math, as well. It is virtually impossible to teach fraction addition, factoring or negative numbers to a student who can’t immediately add, subtract or multiply with the basic tables. Yet current thought suggests that students will eventually become fluent in math only if they can understand the larger concepts behind computation. Try tutoring middle-school or high-school math students who haven’t memorized the basic facts.

Judy Keyes
Milwaukee

We have to ignore the English teachers’ objections as bogus. Remember, it was the English teachers who objected to marking errors on students’ papers because it would damage their psyches. Look what that got us: a nation of cupcakes and poor writers. Good for Georgia and Arkansas!

Em. Prof. Carol G. McKenzie
California State University-Los Angeles[/quote]

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