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There’s a moment early in the novel Anne of Green Gables when Marilla decides the 11-year-old Anne should learn The Lord’s Prayer.
“Take that card and come right to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by heart.”
Anne, we are told, obediently falls to “studying it intently for several silent minutes” before pronouncing it “beautiful.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you thought of making me learn this,” she sighs.
It has been more than a century since the Canadian classic was published, and the idea that an adult would brusquely tell a child to learn something “by heart” — and that the child would know how to follow that instruction — probably seems alien to most families, at least those without a tiger mom in residence.
Parents complain that kids don’t know their times tables, while admitting they don’t know their best friends’ phone numbers or addresses themselves. And our concept of what it means to be an educated person no longer includes the recall of classics from memory; a young couple at a university nowadays wouldn’t be likely to rattle off quotations at each other, in the style of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey in a Dorothy Sayers novel.
Related
Previous generations might have emphasized form at the expense of meaning, but there is a danger in the pendulum swinging too far the other way, as we sneer at “rote learning” and anything that emphasizes pure form rather than content.
Yes, a student learning the Hamlet soliloquy should learn what fardels and bodkins are. But teaching it only as a passage to be translated for its meaning is to rob the student of most of the point, and rob her for life of those touchstone phrases, that universal shorthand about the human condition. Google “No Fear Shakespeare” (“When your books and teachers don’t make sense, we do”) and you’ll find Hamlet asking why any of us bothers living “when you could simply take out your knife and call it quits? Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life…”
No one would bother to memorize that, because no one would even bother to read it.
The human brain still latches on to pleasing rhythms and phrases. We still commit words to heart, without even trying: How many of us can carry on a conversation in Simpsons quotations or sing a jingle? Children still memorize astonishing amounts of information, even if it’s via Pokemon trading cards instead of flash cards. A dementia patient might lose touch with the basic rhythms of the day, yet remember the lines of a hymn or a poem.
There are plenty of examples that show how memorization can still play a positive role in the modern mind. And there’s a danger in a debate over education that pits memory and curiosity against each other, that presents them as opposites, when really they are still both integral parts of how we learn.
Some subcultures in Canada value memorization as an achievement for its own sake, even if it’s not achieved by “rote.” Memorization is a part of bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah ceremonies, for example. In the popular Suzuki method, children learn to play music “by ear,” which means they then necessarily know it “by heart.” They go to their recitals without sheet music to prompt them when they play.
“With kids, it’s not really a conscious thing,” says Michelle Iznardo, artistic director of the National Capital Suzuki School of Music. “You learn music by ear the way you would learn a mother tongue by ear. If you’re submerged in it, you’re constantly exposed to it.”
At the Muslim Association of Canada’s Alfurqan School in Ottawa, children memorize the Qur’an alongside their other academic subjects.
Aadam Sherazi, who is now 13 years old, memorized the entire Qur’an last year, after three years of study.
“If you don’t speak Arabic, like me, then it’s even harder because you have to do rote memorization or you have to listen to it. What I do is I listen to it, and I enjoy listening to it, and I capture the tune and I’m kind of an audio memorizer.”
His mother, Aisha Sherazi, is a principal at Alfurqan. She says Aadam showed an interest in memorization of Qur’an verses and a talent for it, and she wanted to nurture that. There were six other children in Aadam’s group; now there are 26.
“The whole program is really geared towards assisting them to attain academic excellence but also to pursue this interest in the Qur’an. So the way we do that is we design the program around achieving those objectives. How we do that is, Monday to Thursday the kids do three hours of Qur’an a day, and then the rest of the time is spent on academics. And then beyond that, at home we don’t give academic homework from Mondays to Thursdays so the kids really have time to kind of brush up, and then we give academic homework at the weekend. Because it is such a small group, we end up kind of going ahead of the curriculum.”
The memorization component is matched with discussion about the meaning of the verses and the language itself.
“It’s not done just purely in the rote fashion,” Aisha Sherazi explains. “There’s an awful lot of discussion: What does this mean? How can I apply this? There are so many questions that kids have.”
But the beauty of the recitation is itself a thing of value. The memorization component helps the children learn about their own strengths; are they audio learners like Aadam, or do they learn best by working things out on the page? His mother explains that the key to making it a living, interesting project is to use the material, during instruction and long after.
“One of the things with this particular project is that often in Ramadan, for example, there are reciters who are called in from overseas. I think eventually these kids can take that spot, and will have had the training from a very young age and will really emulate Canadian Muslim values that they can then continue forward. I think the next generation will appreciate having someone who knows how they grow up, who knows their unique existence, rather than pray behind someone who may not be familiar with how they’ve grown up, what their needs are, and so on.”
And it gives them confidence to tackle new projects.
“Once you’ve memorized a 600-page book that’s in a different language, you feel like you can do basically anything,” Aadam says. “Finishing the Qur’an ended up feeling a lot different from what I thought it would feel like. I thought it would feel very awesome, and I would be like yes, I’ve done it, I can do this now. But it’s more of a responsibility actually.”
He sees himself as a guardian of the text. Part of that stems from the religious aspect, but a sense of responsibility, of ownership, is common to other fields of memorization.
Iznardo explains that one benefit of the by-heart method in Suzuki is that the musicians have a sense of independence: “You build a repertoire automatically and you can play it anywhere you go.”
That automatic recall is what parents lament when they complain that kids just don’t learn math they way they used to.
But even in math class, the divide between memorization and discovery is largely invented, a political debate that isn’t grounded in what happens in the classroom every day. Kids are supposed to have automatic recall — it’s just that what they’re recalling might be slightly different from what their parents learned.
According to Lynda Colgan, a Queen’s University professor who specializes in elementary mathematics education, the Ontario curriculum still aims to teach kids to know “by heart” the result of eight times six.
“If one has read the Ontario curriculum, there is in that curriculum very clear indication that students are supposed to have automaticity, in terms of things like their basic facts. They are also supposed to have opportunities to investigate concepts, discuss them, have conversations with their peers about them and be engaged in meaningful problem-solving activities. So there is actually no line in the sand with respect to the Ontario curriculum. The lines that have been drawn are actually quite artificial and really do nothing to advance where we are in terms of addressing the issues that are very, very real in terms of advancing student achievement.”
Those real concerns, she says, are the declining achievement between Grades 3 and 6, and the fact that so many students have negative attitudes about math. But as for the widespread notion that kids today simply don’t learn basic operations in school, she says that’s a misunderstanding.
“The questions I frequently get from parents are related to the fact that the math homework that comes home looks so different from what they were doing when they were in school.”
Rather than learning the old methods a parent would recognize for adding, for example, two-digit numbers, children might be learning the meaning behind that operation first. Or they might be learning a different method for achieving the same result.
A generation ago, a baby boomer parent might have wondered why their child couldn’t give an answer to “six eights are,” but the answer was simply that the child learned to recite it as “six times eight is.”
The differences today might be more extreme, but Colgan says these are often to blame for the perception that schools don’t teach basic math skills. Parents might not realize that the standard methods they learned — “carry the one,” for example — are simply conventions and not necessarily the best way for most children to learn how to add, subtract, multiply or divide.
The research over the last few decades has taught us more about how children learn, Colgan says, and that’s why teachers emphasize learning to think in patterns. The skip-counting in Grade 1 “two, four, six, eight” is the foundation of the times table. If children can think in patterns, they won’t freeze if they suddenly forget their memorized answer to “six times eight.” They’ll have a secondary way of getting to that answer, by grouping other numbers together, or adding eight to five times eight.
“Children learn best when they have opportunities to use those patterns playfully and see them often without the pressure of timed tests,” Colgan says. “Many parents will remember, when they were children, they had to do something evil called the ‘mad minute’ in their classrooms. In the ‘mad minute’, they had to do as many multiplication questions as they possibly could. And then the bell was rung and they were graded on the number of questions that they got right. Every day the process was repeated over and over and over again. And the belief at the time was that the children would improve. Well, you know what? Big surprise. Many children actually got worse. Because the stress and the anxiety of the pressure to do these questions under time constraints, purely through memorization, without any understanding, actually was debilitating and worked in exactly the opposite way that we want.”
Colgan says that the goal is still automatic recall, but through a learning process that teaches the underlying meaning, not only the mnemonic devices. If parents are really concerned about teaching their kids math, she says, they should stop being so hung up on grilling them and focus on giving the kids opportunities to use it: to make change using cash, or to cook using a recipe. And one-on-one attention can make a big difference, which she says explains why so many children benefit from private tutors.
Memorization for its own sake doesn’t have to be associated with rote learning of the “mad minute” variety.
In Anne of Green Gables, there are plenty of soul-crushing rote punishments handed out at school — writing lines, for example. But her memorization of poems such as Noyes’ The Highwayman or Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott doesn’t crush Anne’s spirit. On the contrary; those words are her constant friends and the foundation for her own imaginings.
In math as in other fields, there is no stark choice between learning something new and learning it by heart. And the advocates for both techniques run the risk of pushing the pendulm too far.
Kate Heartfield is the Citizen’s editorial pages editor.
查看原文...
“Take that card and come right to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by heart.”
Anne, we are told, obediently falls to “studying it intently for several silent minutes” before pronouncing it “beautiful.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you thought of making me learn this,” she sighs.
It has been more than a century since the Canadian classic was published, and the idea that an adult would brusquely tell a child to learn something “by heart” — and that the child would know how to follow that instruction — probably seems alien to most families, at least those without a tiger mom in residence.
Parents complain that kids don’t know their times tables, while admitting they don’t know their best friends’ phone numbers or addresses themselves. And our concept of what it means to be an educated person no longer includes the recall of classics from memory; a young couple at a university nowadays wouldn’t be likely to rattle off quotations at each other, in the style of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey in a Dorothy Sayers novel.
Related
- Reevely: More math class coming for Ontario's students, minister promises
- Low math scores: Here's what the experts say needs to be done (with video)
Previous generations might have emphasized form at the expense of meaning, but there is a danger in the pendulum swinging too far the other way, as we sneer at “rote learning” and anything that emphasizes pure form rather than content.
Yes, a student learning the Hamlet soliloquy should learn what fardels and bodkins are. But teaching it only as a passage to be translated for its meaning is to rob the student of most of the point, and rob her for life of those touchstone phrases, that universal shorthand about the human condition. Google “No Fear Shakespeare” (“When your books and teachers don’t make sense, we do”) and you’ll find Hamlet asking why any of us bothers living “when you could simply take out your knife and call it quits? Who would choose to grunt and sweat through an exhausting life…”
No one would bother to memorize that, because no one would even bother to read it.
The human brain still latches on to pleasing rhythms and phrases. We still commit words to heart, without even trying: How many of us can carry on a conversation in Simpsons quotations or sing a jingle? Children still memorize astonishing amounts of information, even if it’s via Pokemon trading cards instead of flash cards. A dementia patient might lose touch with the basic rhythms of the day, yet remember the lines of a hymn or a poem.
There are plenty of examples that show how memorization can still play a positive role in the modern mind. And there’s a danger in a debate over education that pits memory and curiosity against each other, that presents them as opposites, when really they are still both integral parts of how we learn.
Some subcultures in Canada value memorization as an achievement for its own sake, even if it’s not achieved by “rote.” Memorization is a part of bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah ceremonies, for example. In the popular Suzuki method, children learn to play music “by ear,” which means they then necessarily know it “by heart.” They go to their recitals without sheet music to prompt them when they play.
“With kids, it’s not really a conscious thing,” says Michelle Iznardo, artistic director of the National Capital Suzuki School of Music. “You learn music by ear the way you would learn a mother tongue by ear. If you’re submerged in it, you’re constantly exposed to it.”
At the Muslim Association of Canada’s Alfurqan School in Ottawa, children memorize the Qur’an alongside their other academic subjects.
Aadam Sherazi, who is now 13 years old, memorized the entire Qur’an last year, after three years of study.
“If you don’t speak Arabic, like me, then it’s even harder because you have to do rote memorization or you have to listen to it. What I do is I listen to it, and I enjoy listening to it, and I capture the tune and I’m kind of an audio memorizer.”
His mother, Aisha Sherazi, is a principal at Alfurqan. She says Aadam showed an interest in memorization of Qur’an verses and a talent for it, and she wanted to nurture that. There were six other children in Aadam’s group; now there are 26.
“The whole program is really geared towards assisting them to attain academic excellence but also to pursue this interest in the Qur’an. So the way we do that is we design the program around achieving those objectives. How we do that is, Monday to Thursday the kids do three hours of Qur’an a day, and then the rest of the time is spent on academics. And then beyond that, at home we don’t give academic homework from Mondays to Thursdays so the kids really have time to kind of brush up, and then we give academic homework at the weekend. Because it is such a small group, we end up kind of going ahead of the curriculum.”
The memorization component is matched with discussion about the meaning of the verses and the language itself.
“It’s not done just purely in the rote fashion,” Aisha Sherazi explains. “There’s an awful lot of discussion: What does this mean? How can I apply this? There are so many questions that kids have.”
But the beauty of the recitation is itself a thing of value. The memorization component helps the children learn about their own strengths; are they audio learners like Aadam, or do they learn best by working things out on the page? His mother explains that the key to making it a living, interesting project is to use the material, during instruction and long after.
“One of the things with this particular project is that often in Ramadan, for example, there are reciters who are called in from overseas. I think eventually these kids can take that spot, and will have had the training from a very young age and will really emulate Canadian Muslim values that they can then continue forward. I think the next generation will appreciate having someone who knows how they grow up, who knows their unique existence, rather than pray behind someone who may not be familiar with how they’ve grown up, what their needs are, and so on.”
And it gives them confidence to tackle new projects.
“Once you’ve memorized a 600-page book that’s in a different language, you feel like you can do basically anything,” Aadam says. “Finishing the Qur’an ended up feeling a lot different from what I thought it would feel like. I thought it would feel very awesome, and I would be like yes, I’ve done it, I can do this now. But it’s more of a responsibility actually.”
He sees himself as a guardian of the text. Part of that stems from the religious aspect, but a sense of responsibility, of ownership, is common to other fields of memorization.
Iznardo explains that one benefit of the by-heart method in Suzuki is that the musicians have a sense of independence: “You build a repertoire automatically and you can play it anywhere you go.”
That automatic recall is what parents lament when they complain that kids just don’t learn math they way they used to.
But even in math class, the divide between memorization and discovery is largely invented, a political debate that isn’t grounded in what happens in the classroom every day. Kids are supposed to have automatic recall — it’s just that what they’re recalling might be slightly different from what their parents learned.
According to Lynda Colgan, a Queen’s University professor who specializes in elementary mathematics education, the Ontario curriculum still aims to teach kids to know “by heart” the result of eight times six.
“If one has read the Ontario curriculum, there is in that curriculum very clear indication that students are supposed to have automaticity, in terms of things like their basic facts. They are also supposed to have opportunities to investigate concepts, discuss them, have conversations with their peers about them and be engaged in meaningful problem-solving activities. So there is actually no line in the sand with respect to the Ontario curriculum. The lines that have been drawn are actually quite artificial and really do nothing to advance where we are in terms of addressing the issues that are very, very real in terms of advancing student achievement.”
Those real concerns, she says, are the declining achievement between Grades 3 and 6, and the fact that so many students have negative attitudes about math. But as for the widespread notion that kids today simply don’t learn basic operations in school, she says that’s a misunderstanding.
“The questions I frequently get from parents are related to the fact that the math homework that comes home looks so different from what they were doing when they were in school.”
Rather than learning the old methods a parent would recognize for adding, for example, two-digit numbers, children might be learning the meaning behind that operation first. Or they might be learning a different method for achieving the same result.
A generation ago, a baby boomer parent might have wondered why their child couldn’t give an answer to “six eights are,” but the answer was simply that the child learned to recite it as “six times eight is.”
The differences today might be more extreme, but Colgan says these are often to blame for the perception that schools don’t teach basic math skills. Parents might not realize that the standard methods they learned — “carry the one,” for example — are simply conventions and not necessarily the best way for most children to learn how to add, subtract, multiply or divide.
The research over the last few decades has taught us more about how children learn, Colgan says, and that’s why teachers emphasize learning to think in patterns. The skip-counting in Grade 1 “two, four, six, eight” is the foundation of the times table. If children can think in patterns, they won’t freeze if they suddenly forget their memorized answer to “six times eight.” They’ll have a secondary way of getting to that answer, by grouping other numbers together, or adding eight to five times eight.
“Children learn best when they have opportunities to use those patterns playfully and see them often without the pressure of timed tests,” Colgan says. “Many parents will remember, when they were children, they had to do something evil called the ‘mad minute’ in their classrooms. In the ‘mad minute’, they had to do as many multiplication questions as they possibly could. And then the bell was rung and they were graded on the number of questions that they got right. Every day the process was repeated over and over and over again. And the belief at the time was that the children would improve. Well, you know what? Big surprise. Many children actually got worse. Because the stress and the anxiety of the pressure to do these questions under time constraints, purely through memorization, without any understanding, actually was debilitating and worked in exactly the opposite way that we want.”
Colgan says that the goal is still automatic recall, but through a learning process that teaches the underlying meaning, not only the mnemonic devices. If parents are really concerned about teaching their kids math, she says, they should stop being so hung up on grilling them and focus on giving the kids opportunities to use it: to make change using cash, or to cook using a recipe. And one-on-one attention can make a big difference, which she says explains why so many children benefit from private tutors.
Memorization for its own sake doesn’t have to be associated with rote learning of the “mad minute” variety.
In Anne of Green Gables, there are plenty of soul-crushing rote punishments handed out at school — writing lines, for example. But her memorization of poems such as Noyes’ The Highwayman or Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott doesn’t crush Anne’s spirit. On the contrary; those words are her constant friends and the foundation for her own imaginings.
In math as in other fields, there is no stark choice between learning something new and learning it by heart. And the advocates for both techniques run the risk of pushing the pendulm too far.
Kate Heartfield is the Citizen’s editorial pages editor.
查看原文...
