Combination of public, private and catholic schools both resident and day student.
Memorized poetry, in english, french and spanish [depending on what class I was going to] memorized major speeches and scenes from plays [shakespeare, williams and ibsen] and lists of events, kings and treaties in history and social studies.
I also have a few passages and poems memorized in latin, and some in anglo-saxon, and a song in japanese. Oh, and countless songs in various languages from chorus - we learned one hymn in english and welsh both, and would sing it in either. I particularly liked latin hymns, I like the tonal patterning and the way it can be very spacy feeling.
There’s a story I love, about a writer named Stephen King (you might have heard of him. They made a movie based on one of his books. It was about some kids and a clown.) When he was in school, the students were all required to choose a verse from the Bible and memorize it. Being the smartass that he was, he chose the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus Wept.”
As for me, in high school I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address (open to debate as to whether it’s a lengthy passage). The strategy my dad taught me for memorizing it was to tape a copy of it over the toilet, a place where I could reliably be expected to spend much of my day without having anything else much to do. We also had to memorize the introduction to Canterbury Tales in whichever form of English it was written in (Middle English? I forget.) I can’t remember any of that anymore, but I can recognize it if I hear it.
Being the good Catholic boy that I am (well, being good boy, and the somewhat lackluster Catholic that I am), I had to memorize various prayers and creeds in high school as part of my religious education (not as part of high school, just during my high school years). I memorized the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Nicene Creed, and something else that I obviously should have done a better job of memorizing.
In the Boy Scouts, I had to memorize the Scout Oath, the Scout Law, and the Scout Motto (Do a Good Deed Daily, that’s an easy one). Similar things had to be memorized when I was in Tiger Cubs and Weblos before that.
In the Air Force, I’ve had to memorize the Airmen’s Creed (Which I really dislike having to do. I get what the Creed is about, but it’d be entirely unnecessary if they’d just teach Airmen the fricken Air Force Song, which hits all the same topics, and is awesomer at the same time.), the first couple of verses to the Air Force Song (there’s another two or three versus they never seem to teach, and they’re some of the better ones, IMO.), descriptions of various rank insignia (“The rank insignia of a Technical Sergeant is a Chevron of five stripes. The Rank insignia of a Master Sergeant is a Chevron of six stripes, one inverted. Etc.”)
Memorizing things seems to be an ongoing part of my life, actually. Kinda wish I’d learned it better as a lil kid, it’d make my life a LOT easier now in some ways.
Yep, Middle English. Wan that April with its shores soote, blah blah blah. I cannot imagine what value memorizing that particular piece is meant to have, at all. “Here kids, clog up your brain with a not particularly inspiring, particularly meaningful or particularly interesting bit of dead language, and be willing and able to parrot it back with proper pronunciation for a grade!” Way to make people excited about learning. :rolleyes:
I suppose you could say it was to hammer home the fact that a language will evolve significantly over time. Then again, anybody who has ever talked to their parents knows that language does that.
I am 41, public school in Ontario, was not required to memorize long passages. I do recognize portions if I hear/read them.
My father (68) grew up in New Brunswick and DID have to memorize long passages. I know this because they come out after he’s had a couple of beers. :0)
I didn’t have to do it that often, but I did vote ‘yes in public school’ because I remember at least one occasion. When covering ‘Romeo and Juliet’, we were allowed to pick one speech, I think it had to be at least 20 lines long, and had to memorize and recite it.
I picked Father Mercutio’s explanation of how he’s going to fake Juliet’s death, and I can’t remember more than snatches of it at the moment, though if I looked it up in the text it probably wouldn’t be that hard to refresh my memory.
I had a difficult time choosing an answer, because the question was “Did you have to. . .”
I chose ‘yes’, because, for my lit class, it was graded. However. . .it was a College Prep course, and I elected to take a course that was at that level. Just because I liked reading/lit. I don’t think the students in the same school who took regular lit had to memorize anything long.
I wonder if some of us were in the same school, because I always just assumed I had the only high school english lit teacher who required memorization of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Who knew?
She also had us take a run at some portion of Beowulf among others, but nothing stuck with me like Chaucer. I think I still have most of that first 18 lines clogging portions of my brain.
What a useless exercise it all was. We had to memorize Marc Antony’s entire soliloquy (Friends, romans, countryman…etc.) and reproduce it for a test, and the first part of the Declaration of Independence. I’m sure there were others, but those come to mind quickly.
I’m a product of public schools, and I thank my lucky stars that I never had to memorize any literature. Blech.
There’s a difference between memorizing discrete items (state capitals, the ideal gas law, multipication tables) and memorizing great swaths of literature text, IMO. I think the former is more important than the latter.
I voted no – we did once have to recite poetry from memory, but it was in a class specifically about poetry, and poetry is meant to be read aloud. Our teacher recited “The Lovesong of J. Afred Prufrock” from memory!
Similarly, in my high school drama class we memorized our scenes – for the purpose of performing them as intended.
We never had to recite in a straight-up Literature class.
Memorizing large blocks of text from novels seems quite pointless to me. It’s not how the work was intended to be used so the recitation adds nothing to the understanding of the material.
John 11:35. We had that one down pat! The cool kids made a point of memorizing the longest verse, Esther 8:9, too. It was assumed that John 3:16, Proverbs 3:5-6, and Romans 3:23 were known by heart, so memorization assignments usually covered other material.
It seems really weird to reflect on this now. I know most folks wouldn’t even know how to use the Book Chapter:Verse citation system to look something up in a Bible, yet it was such a big part of my education.
Graduated from public high school in CA in 1996, never had to memorize anything in English classes.
The only things we were required to memorize were in junior high history. In seventh grade, we had to memorize the names of the presidents of the US in chronological order to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy. I can still do this - in fact, I don’t even need to sing it, I can just recite them while mentally singing the song. It is an impressive party trick. In eighth grade, we had to memorize the preamble to the Constitution. Probably because we didn’t set it to a song, I no longer have it memorized.
My personal favorite Bible verse is Proverbs 16:18.
Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Admittedly, I only know that line because it was misquoted on Babylon 5 (well, they compressed the quote to “Pride goeth before a Fall”, as “An old human saying.”
