The Power of the Spoken Word

“背誦全文”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.

美國的佐治亞州和阿肯色州推出了新教育標準，標準中包含了一些看起來不起眼，但實際上具有改革性的要求。

在佐治亞州，學生需要通過背誦全部或部分重要詩歌、演講來構建“背景知識”。阿肯色州計劃要求學生背誦一段著名的詩歌、戲劇或演講，如“葛底斯堡演說”、《哈姆雷特》中的“生存還是毀滅”、格溫多林·布魯克斯的《我們真的很酷》。讓學生將這些背給別人聽，這似乎是一種過時的要求。

大多數父母可能會認為這種練習很有價值，能讓孩子受到鼓舞，從而在公共場合演說，激發他們的想象力。但英語老師反對讓青少年銘記雋永的言辭。現代教育工作者認為背誦是空洞的重復，機械灌輸，缺乏創意和思考。他們說，背誦課文只是把信息丟進學生的腦子里，這屬于死記硬背，而不是批判性的分析。

然而事實并非如此。背誦可以讓學生在當下切身體會具有時代價值的文章。背一首詩或一篇演講意味著站在作者的角度思考他的意圖。確定背誦時要強調的單詞，意味著要思考這些單詞的意思。這就是為什么公眾演講曾經是許多學院和大學的必修課的原因。

在社交媒體和人工智能的時代，背誦比以往任何時候都顯得更加重要。背誦經典讓我們記得它們是鮮活的。

當背書的青少年回到座位上時，他們知道自己已經把這些不朽的語句內化于心了。家長和學生在那一刻的感受遠勝于得到一個好成績。在短短幾分鐘內，奮進的青少年變成了金、弗羅斯特或莎士比亞。

拉爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生寫道：“每個人都是演說家。一個人的言辭能激勵其他人……使他們接收他的觀點，再傳遞出去。”背誦經典語句，在當下重現過去的言辭，把我們變成了接收者和傳遞者。當我們斟酌有影響力的男性和女性的話語，并意識到它們仍然有所用處時，能讓我們受益。佐治亞州和阿肯色州明白這一點。希望更多的州效仿它們。

Word Bank

revolutionary /'rev?'lu???n?ri/ adj. 巨變的；突破性的

prescriptive /pr?'skr?pt?v/ adj. 指定的；規定的

transcend /tr?n'send/ v. 優于；勝過

Love from the bottom of heart can transcend everything.

eloquence /'el?kw?ns/ n. 文采；口才