As a child of 7, I remember being forced to learn a poem every week which was later to be recited on Friday mornings before the rest of my classmates. At the time it was a harrowing ordeal and the steely eyed look of the teacher didn’t help bring the words to mind. However there is one poem I have never forgotten from those days of purple blazers and grey shorts. That piece being William Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. Whilst I might not have felt I was benefiting at the time, I now realise the rather strenuous learning of poetry stood me in good stead for the future.
The BBC is seeking to help children engage in learning and reciting poetry. Every primary school in the UK is being encouraged to enter a child aged 7 – 11 to compete for the title of UK Poetry Recital Champion, and the chance to represent their school and region in an upcoming competition to be shown on BBC TV in spring 2009.
Pupils taking part will stand in front of their fellows and deliver poems ranging from The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear to Rudyard Kipling’s The Way Through the Woods. Winners will be chosen from each school that holds the competition. The group will then be narrowed down to 12 finalists chosen in regional competitions held at local libraries. The grand final will then take place next April in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
“Poetry is a bit of a dying art and the only way we will get it back to the front of the nation’s consciousness is to teach it to kids,” says author and television presenter Daisy Goodwin. “This will be great fun. It won’t be The X Factor. It will be a warm, friendly competition.”
As many people will concur with, last year’s Ofsted report branded the teaching of poetry in schools countrywide as “dull” and “lightweight”.
Daisy Goodwin believes that the answer lies in starting young. “A seven-year-old might miss every nuance of Kubla Khan or Ozymandias. But learnt young, the poems will stay in the head for life, adding to the lustre of good moments and illumination in the bad.”
The scheme has already been tried and tested in Ireland and the United States where one Kansas teacher has said, ““Success in reciting poetry gives even reluctant learners a feeling of success in an area in which they have had little interest.”
For more information visit the BBC website’s Off By Heart.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I remember only being made to learn a recite a piece of poetry once in my whole school life. The experience made me quite dizzy and I was left feeling exhilerated, nearly close to tears.
I don’t know why the experience made me feel that way, the poem was not a particularly remarkable one (changing guards at buckingham palace) but I think I became alarmingly aware at how well words could be used, how powerful they are and what a waste our everyday, menial conversations can be.
Strangely enough, just before reading this article the experience of reading in front of my class (at about 7 years of age) came in to my mind and I had considered teaching my own daughter to learn to recite a poem or two.
Currently our family life involves me either reading poetry to them from a children’s book on a regular basis or me bursting in to semi-rhyming verses during the middle of conversations where I choose to take on various characters.
My daughter also likes to make up her own ‘poems’, which actually seem to be more like attempts at rather awful jokes with no punchline! However, recently I had a letter sent home from school saying that my daughter had been entered in to a poetry competition and she had been one of the winners of the catergory for her age and would I like to by the poetry anthem in which the poem appeared? On reading the sample ‘poem’ I was mortified. This poem had been so obviously ‘helped’ along that the natural ‘voice’ of my own rather articulate child was no longer present, I wondered in fact at one point if they had swapped her name over by accident as being that we are a vegetarian household I could see a discrepancy with her describing her favourite food as ‘beefburger’!
My response and the story I have related are mainly a way of saying that I am worried about the way in which poetry is being taught in school if that is the resultant effect. Perhaps Edward the concept of getting children, or more to the point forcing children to learn to read and recite is not such a good one but in some ways I am ever so keen on holding on to some of the areas of good old fashioned discipline that seem to be missing from so much of education and life these days.
My daughter recently joined the mini-guides (Rainbows, a girl guide movement for under 7’s) and she had extreme difficulty even learning the abridged version of the guiding oath, which at her age is only 4 lines long!
Learning by rote gives children some kind of feeling about the depth, movement and possibility of using words in a creative context. They may not understand what they have learned but they know instictively that there is an intent and a purpose behind the words they are learning. I think this is so important today in a world where the media throw at our young ones such ugly use of language, dumbed down childrens’ literature and t.v. programmes where the voices of the characters lack elegance and grace.
Perhaps I am just old fashioned!
You make some very good points Lorraine and thank you for telling me about your experiences.
I agree that learning poetry at an early age, whether by rote or just shared reading is an extremely beneficial practice. Whilst the benefits might not be immediately apparent, in the long run it can provide an excellent basis for literary prowess.
Using poetry at this receptive age, especially at home and using games can improve greatly the quality of everyday spoken English, indeed, giving it a musical quality that stands out.