I remember how it was -- JR
The blessing of 'rote' memory
I agree with Jeff Jacoby below. The poetry I memorized in my student days is a lasting pleasure to me. Sometimes I just recite it in my head and sometimes I recite it out loud for an audience. I know, for instance, about the first hundred lines of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" by heart -- in the original Middle English. I once won a heart by reciting it to a lady.
I also once got a very good response from a brilliant lady by reciting in an appropriate setting Goethe's Meeres Stille, even though the lady knew no German
I also enjoy Tennyson's poems but since "Break, Break, Break" is in fact praise of a homosexual love I have never recited it to anyone
HERE'S A hypothesis: Perhaps one factor in Volodymyr Zelensky's skill as a wartime political leader is his training as an actor, which developed his ability to rally followers, evoke empathy, and convincingly express the justice of the cause for which Ukraine is fighting. Arguably, the many years Zelensky spent memorizing scripts and honing the ability to deliver lines effectively are now contributing to his effectiveness as Ukraine's president.
In a similar vein, historians have argued that Ronald Reagan's experience in Hollywood prepared him to become the "Great Communicator" who later proved so successful as president of the United States.
Winston Churchill wasn't a professional actor. But he too committed prodigious amounts of material to memory — not only entire speeches to be delivered in Parliament, but also vast swaths of Shakespeare's plays. Richard Burton ruefully recalled playing Hamlet in a performance attended by Churchill, who, from his seat in the audience, could be heard reciting the prince of Denmark's lines. "I could not shake him off," Burton said. "I tried going fast. I tried going slow. . . . He knew the play absolutely backward; he knows perhaps a dozen of Shakespeare's plays intimately."
More than one observer has suggested that the rhetoric in Churchill's wartime speeches echoes the inspiriting patriotism — "We few, we band of brothers" — of the message delivered by Shakespeare's Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt.
I don't want to overstate the point. It does seem plausible to me that practice at memorizing texts and reciting them by heart would be an asset for anyone with political aspirations. But memorization is a wonderful and valuable activity regardless of any political benefits.
There was a time when memorization was a standard feature of American schooling. In 1927, New York City's board of education directed grade school teachers to teach poetry to pupils, with particular emphasis on the use of rhythm, diction, and imagery. Children were to memorize at least some of the poems they studied. Among the material recommended by the board "for reading and memorization" in the first, second, and third grades were works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Christina Rossetti, Alfred Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By the time they were in seventh and eighth grades, students were memorizing chunks of Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare, along with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
Needless to say, it isn't only literature that can be memorized. The elements of the periodic table, the names and locations of the 50 states, the 46 US presidents, the first 100 digits of pi, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, all the Best Picture Oscar winners — the list is literally endless.
When I was 11 or 12, I took it into my head to memorize the names of every sitting US senator and governor. Some of my sports-minded friends knew the starting lineup of each American League baseball team. When my twin niece and nephew were toddlers, my brother taught them the names of the 15 former Soviet republics and their capitals. He would say "Kyrgyzstan" and, from their high chairs, they would call out "Bishkek."
Everyone memorizes some things — the multiplication tables, their Social Security number, song lyrics, the wifi password, family members' birthdays — but memorization for its own sake has long since gone out of favor. Writing in The American Scholar more than 40 years ago, the late Clara Claiborne Park, a professor of English at Williams College, commented on the disdain with which professional educators dismissed learning material by heart as mere "rote memory."
She quoted one college professor who sneeringly called memorization "the lowest form of human intellectual activity." If anything, the rise of the Internet has exacerbated that attitude. "I've almost given up making an effort to remember anything," Clive Thompson, a columnist at Wired, has written, "because I can instantly retrieve the information online."
Winston Churchill was known to commit prodigious amounts of material to memory, including speeches to be delivered in Parliament and vast swaths of Shakespeare's plays.
But there is nothing "low" about mastering a block of information so effectively that you can surface it at will. Who has ever regretted being able to recite Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" from memory? Or readily identify a bird from its songs? Or name the planets of the Solar System? You don't have to be a "Jeopardy!" contestant to relish having instant recall of thick slices of knowledge. Memorization takes work, but there is joy in the accumulation of knowledge that requires no googling.
The more information for which you develop "muscle memory," the more tools you have for thinking and reasoning — the more connections you can perceive in the world, the more insights you can draw, the more moments of intellectual serendipity you may experience. In that sense, memorized information is mental circuitry that provides a path for imagination and understanding to flow.
Granted, memorizing "mere" facts and figures is not the same as learning to think. But it does stock one's mind, as Park put it, with something "to think about, to think with, a range of language to think and speak in."
Our brain's capacity for memory is immense. We really should be putting it to better use.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26166/the-blessing-of-rote-memory
***************************************************US professor wins $400,000 payout after refusing to call trans student a woman
A public university in Ohio has agreed to pay $400,000 to one of its professors after it rebuked him for refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns.
In 2018, Nicholas Meriwether, a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University in southern Ohio, addressed a transgender student as “sir” when she raised her hand in class.
This prompted the university to launch an investigation into the incident. It found that Meriwether had created a “hostile environment” in the classroom.
The university delivered Meriwether a written warning that stated that he could be fired or suspended without pay for violating the university’s nondiscrimination policy.
Meriwether asked if referring to all students by self-asserted gender identity, and including a disclaimer in his syllabus that noted he was only doing so under “compulsion”, would comply with the university’s policies, which he was told would not.
He also offered to refer to the student by either first or last preferred legal name without using gendered titles, but continued to refuse to refer to the student as a woman.
Meriwether then sued the university, but had his case dismissed by a federal district court due to lack of standing.
However, in 2020, a three-judge panel from the sixth US circuit court of appeals ruled that Meriwether is allowed to sue the school, writing in a 32-page opinion: “Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom. They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides.”
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Education Dept. changes to affect nearly 4M student loan borrowers
President Joe Biden's Education Department again moved to ease the burden of U.S. student loans on Tuesday, with the federal government claiming its latest reforms will wipe out debts for 40,000 such borrowers and bring 3.6 million Americans closer to ending their payments.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called the current system a 'life sentence' for millions of low-income borrowers and pledged to correct 'historical failures' that have plagued repayment schemes like the income-driven repayment program (IDR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF).
Borrowers working as public servants are eligible for forgiveness under PSLF once they’ve made 10 years of qualifying payments.
'Student loans were never meant to be a life sentence, but it’s certainly felt that way for borrowers locked out of debt relief they’re eligible for,' Cardona said in a press release.
'Today, the Department of Education will begin to remedy years of administrative failures that effectively denied the promise of loan forgiveness to certain borrowers enrolled in IDR plans.
'These actions once again demonstrate the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to delivering meaningful debt relief and ensuring federal student loan programs are administered fairly and effectively.'
Roughly 41 million Americans collectively own about $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, larger than the total sum of the country's credit card and auto loan debt.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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