Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imagine, being required to memorize a recite passages from famous works of literature! Such a novel idea. /s Is this happening in FCPS?

New ed­u­ca­tional stan­dards in Geor­gia and Ar­kansas in­clude mod­est-sound­ing re­quire­ments that are in fact rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

In Geor­gia stu­dents will be re­quired to build “back­ground knowl­edge” by recit­ing all or part of sig­nif­i­cant po­ems and speeches. The Ar­kansas plan calls for stu­dents to re­cite a pas­sage from a well-known poem, play or speech. That’s it: an old-fash­ioned de­mand that stu­dents mem­o­rize the Get­tys­burg Ad­dress or Ham­let’s “To be or not to be” or Gwen­dolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” and re­cite it to an au­di­ence.

Most par­ents would prob­a­bly call this a wor­thy ex­er­cise, fos­ter­ing the courage to speak in pub­lic and fir­ing the ado­les­cent imag­i­na­tion. Who could ob­ject to lodg­ing mem­o­rable words in teenage heads oth­er­wise packed with Tik­Tok videos?

Eng­lish teach­ers, that’s who. Mod­ern ed­u­ca­tors view mem­o­riza-tion as empty rep­e­ti­tion, me­chan­i-cal and pre­scrip­tive rather than cre­ative or thought­ful. Recit­ing texts from mem­ory, they say, merely drops in­for­ma­tion into stu­dents’ minds. It’s rote learn­ing in­stead of crit­i­cal analy­sis.

That’s wrong. Recita­tion al­lows stu­dents to ex­pe­ri­ence a text as a liv­ing thing, ready to be taken up by a new gen­er­a­tion. Com­mit­ting a poem or speech to mem­ory means step­ping into the au­thor’s shoes and pon­der­ing what he meant. De­cid­ing which words to stress when recit­ing means think­ing about what those words mean. This is why pub­lic speak­ing was once a re­quire­ment at many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.

In our age of so­cial me­dia and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, the prac­tice of recita­tion has never been more needed. Mem­o­riz­ing clas­sic words re­minds us that they are alive.

Ar­kansas and Geor­gia have some­thing even stronger than ped­a­gog­i­cal the­ory to jus­tify the new—or, rather, old—stan­dards. Watch the faces of par­ents as they lis­ten to their chil­dren urg­ing us all to­ward what Mar­tin Luther King Jr. called “a dream deeply rooted in the Amer­i­can dream,” or say­ing with Robert Frost, “I have been one ac­quainted with the night,” or with Shake­speare, “To­mor­row and to­mor­row and to­mor­row . . .”

When young re­citers re­turn to their seats, they know they have made age­less words their own. What par­ents and stu­dents feel at that mo­ment tran­scends a good grade. For a few min­utes, striv­ing teens be­come King, Frost or Shake­speare.

“Every man is an or­a­tor,” Ralph Waldo Emer­son wrote. “The elo­quence of one stim­u­lates all the rest . . . to a de­gree that makes them good re­ceivers and con­duc­tors.” Recit­ing clas­sic lines brings past elo­quence into the present, turn­ing us into re­ceivers and con­duc­tors. When we weigh the words of in­flu­en­tial men and women and re­al­ize they are still use­ful, we all ben­e­fit. Geor­gia and Ar­kansas un­der­stand this. Let’s hope many more states fol­low their lead.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kids-and-the-power-of-the-spoken-word-georgia-arkansas-memory-classics-c55366e4

Are you kidding? This has to be a joke Arkansas public’s are ranked 49

You are a moron

Move to Russia or North Korea or homeschool but in no way should Fios ever model Arkansas or Georgia

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

What do you want to bet that Georgia and Arkansas have *gasp* homework? Do you really think students are memorizing their poems during class time?

Of course Fairfax students cannot possibly memorize anything. They cannot spare the time...

They won’t memorize poetry as homework. They barely do their existing homework.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

What do you want to bet that Georgia and Arkansas have *gasp* homework? Do you really think students are memorizing their poems during class time?

Of course Fairfax students cannot possibly memorize anything. They cannot spare the time...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

+1

Yes there is. How much class time will be used to memorize a 3 stanza poem? Way more than you think. It is a waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

+1. I can’t believe OP thinks memorizing is something worth praising and recommending.

Memorization is part of learning. It is a simple as that. How did you learn your times tables?

So now they have to memorize Canterbury Tales?

Anonymous wrote:I feel like you guys are just looking for reasons to be against this. There’s no good reason to oppose it 🙄

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

Bingo!!! Memorizing is not learning! Applying knowledge show mastery in learning.

Memorizing is quite literally learning. How do you think kids get the knowledge that they are supposed to “show mastery” of?

You could “teach” me how to say a sentence in Korean without telling me what it means. We could go over and over it with me repeating until I had it memorized. I’d be able to recite the sounds but it wouldn’t have any meaning. What good is that? What did I learn?

OMG. You can't be serious. We are OBVIOUSLY talking about memorizing works written in our native language. I can't believe this has to be explained to you.
DP

Even in English, memorizing doesn’t mean you understand. Let’s simply memorize some of Hamlet: “To be or not to be”. One can memorize this word for word, but if that’s all you do in order to regurgitate words with no understanding, it may as well be a foreign language.

The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

Bingo!!! Memorizing is not learning! Applying knowledge show mastery in learning.

Memorizing is quite literally learning. How do you think kids get the knowledge that they are supposed to “show mastery” of?

You could “teach” me how to say a sentence in Korean without telling me what it means. We could go over and over it with me repeating until I had it memorized. I’d be able to recite the sounds but it wouldn’t have any meaning. What good is that? What did I learn?

OMG. You can't be serious. We are OBVIOUSLY talking about memorizing works written in our native language. I can't believe this has to be explained to you.
DP

Whoosh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most kids don't memorize all the time, but the idea of memorizing one thing a year whether your speech on your project or a poem or the preamble helps you understand how words really matter and just builds that skill of committing information to memory. Just like learning math helps you with problem solving.

I can memorize anything without understanding it, or wanting to understand it. It means nothing.

I knew a particular poem by heart, but I didn't understand any of it until I was an adult because when I was younger, I didn't like poetry. It meant nothing to me.

This accomplishes nothing.

Math is different where you have building blocks, math knowledge builds on math knowledge.

Memorizing a particular poem doesn't help you understand complex text. It will only be helpful if you have to analyze the text, not just memorize it.

Maybe, some of the kids DO understand. And, things have greater meaning as you grow older. In fifth grade, we memorized Crossing the Bar (Tennyson). The teacher was quite clear on what it meant. And, as I grow older and older the meaning becomes clearer.
We also memorized 'In Flanders Field." We learned what that meant, too. She taught us about WWI and what the poppies symbolized and why people wear poppies on Nov 11 (at least they did in my town which had a huge Veterans Day parade.)
I think Kipling's "If" was another one. Some great lessons in that one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This would be far too traumatizing for kids today due to high level of anxiety disorders. Neither of those states are beacons for inclusiveness so of course they would require this. I would opt my kid out.

No memorization and no writing assignments. All classes described as advanced. No recognition for outstanding academic work. No consequences for not following rules. No standardized assessments scores needed. Mediocrity is the goal!

Anonymous wrote:A good idea, so it’s a non-starter for FCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Except this is not how kids learn their times tables now! There are all kinds of strategies that teachers incorporate into learning multiplication and division. Researchers discovered long ago that rote memorization does not work for many kids.

Educational research often contradicts itself. There is plenty of research that supports it. i've never seen research that says it does not work.

just because it does not work for some kids, does not mean it does not work for most.

Just because you cannot memorize, does not mean that most kids cannot.

It also proves to kids that they can do something. It is a fairly easy challenge and helps build self esteem when child is able to memorize something. And, it can be very helpful. It can help build a love for words and literature. In the case of math, it makes calculations easier.

That does not mean that math concepts are not taught along with it. These things are not murually exclusive. It does not have to be one or the other. There is value in balance.

Except this is not how kids learn their times tables now! There are all kinds of strategies that teachers incorporate into learning multiplication and division. Researchers discovered long ago that rote memorization does not work for many kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Memorizing classic words doesn’t mean they understand them. I’d rather my child understand the purpose and meaning without being able to recite word for word.

+1. I can’t believe OP thinks memorizing is something worth praising and recommending.

Memorization is part of learning. It is a simple as that. How did you learn your times tables?

Except this is not how kids learn their times tables now! There are all kinds of strategies that teachers incorporate into learning multiplication and division. Researchers discovered long ago that rote memorization does not work for many kids.