"Learning by heart"

Having re-read some Coleridge last week, I've been rediscovering some other classic poets such as Longfellow. That followed some family history research when I was looking at my grandmother's childhood in Stackpole in Pembrokeshire. She and her siblings were at the village school there in the early 1890s; when I visited the school a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to find records of the curriculum from her time there and they made fascinating reading. Reading books included a series entitled "The Royal English History Readers" (of which I can now find no trace) and there were "object lessons" on items such as postage stamps, the forge and coal, taught to combine elements of literacy and numeracy - pretty much like present day project work.

But it was the poetry teaching that really caught my imagination - I could almost hear the children reciting in turn the weekly poem set for learning by heart. Favourites seem to have been "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Longfellow, "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold and "Somebody's Mother" by Mary Dow Brine - all good, "improving" stuff! But woe betide the children if they failed to commit the poems to memory and to regurgitate as required - corporal punishment was very much the order of the day. My grandmother had a life long stammer and must have found recitation before her peers a nightmare.

I have known many people put off poetry for good when it was badly taught at school, but I know others who have developed an ongoing love of it when it was introduced in an interesting and sympathetic manner - I'd include myself in that group. I'm always so pleased when I hear of schools in which poetry is still an important feature and delighted when we have young people taking part in our local poetry events. Not that we hear a lot of "The Wreck of the Hesperus" these days though ....

Stackpole School staff and pupils c. 1891