The Power of the Spoken Word

“背诵全文”的魅力

New educational standards in Georgia and Arkansas， USA 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， encouraging their kids to speak in public and firing the adolescent imagination. While English teachers could object to lodging memorable words in teenage heads. Modern educators view memorization as empty repetition， mechanical 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 considering 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.

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.

美国的佐治亚州和阿肯色州推出了新教育标准，标准中包含了一些看起来不起眼，但实际上具有改革性的要求。

在佐治亚州，学生需要通过背诵全部或部分重要诗歌、演讲来构建“背景知识”。阿肯色州计划要求学生背诵一段著名的诗歌、戏剧或演讲，如“葛底斯堡演说”、《哈姆雷特》中的“生存还是毁灭”、格温多林·布鲁克斯的《我们真的很酷》。让学生将这些背给别人听，这似乎是一种过时的要求。

大多数父母可能会认为这种练习很有价值，能让孩子受到鼓舞，从而在公共场合演说，激发他们的想象力。但英语老师反对让青少年铭记隽永的言辞。现代教育工作者认为背诵是空洞的重复，机械灌输，缺乏创意和思考。他们说，背诵课文只是把信息丢进学生的脑子里，这属于死记硬背，而不是批判性的分析。

然而事实并非如此。背诵可以让学生在当下切身体会具有时代价值的文章。背一首诗或一篇演讲意味着站在作者的角度思考他的意图。确定背诵时要强调的单词，意味着要思考这些单词的意思。这就是为什么公众演讲曾经是许多学院和大学的必修课的原因。

在社交媒体和人工智能的时代，背诵比以往任何时候都显得更加重要。背诵经典让我们记得它们是鲜活的。

当背书的青少年回到座位上时，他们知道自己已经把这些不朽的语句内化于心了。家长和学生在那一刻的感受远胜于得到一个好成绩。在短短几分钟内，奋进的青少年变成了金、弗罗斯特或莎士比亚。

拉尔夫·沃尔多·爱默生写道：“每个人都是演说家。一个人的言辞能激励其他人……使他们接收他的观点，再传递出去。”背诵经典语句，在当下重现过去的言辞，把我们变成了接收者和传递者。当我们斟酌有影响力的男性和女性的话语，并意识到它们仍然有所用处时，能让我们受益。佐治亚州和阿肯色州明白这一点。希望更多的州效仿它们。

Word Bank

revolutionary /'revə'luːʃənəri/ adj. 巨变的；突破性的

prescriptive /prɪ'skrɪptɪv/ adj. 指定的；规定的

transcend /træn'send/ v. 优于；胜过

Love from the bottom of heart can transcend everything.

eloquence /'eləkwəns/ n. 文采；口才