О вербальной наркотизации
Попалась на глаза статья, A.Waddell, Why I Force My Students to Memorize Poetry, American Educator, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2011. На первый взгляд может показаться, что это такие стандартные жалобы преподавателя на детей, которые мало учатся, но на самом деле статья совсем про другое. Выпишу на мой взгляд самую интересную цитату, длинную и немного жутковатую: When my grandfather was dying, my mother tried to distract him, from the pain of his suffering and from the indignity of the crowded public hospital where he would spend the last few days of his life, by asking him to recite a poem he'd learned in grade school. "I don't remember that," he barked. For my own part, I thought my mother was crazy. Besides having been out of grade school for 75 years, Grandpa suffered from arteriosclerosis, which had made him forgetful, a neighborhood wanderer, a man who couldn't always retrieve his grandson's name or what state he lived in.
"Sure you do, Dad," she said. "Half a league, half a league / Half a league onward." And to my amazement, Grandpa joined in. "All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred." Thirty, forty, fifty lines came rolling out of him. His voice deepened; the lines in his face relaxed. He was somewhere else.
The words were deep in his mind, close to the soul. As his brain shut down it had inexplicably chosen this to retain alive. Poem after poem, as well as the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution, the 23rd Psalm and many, many others, she coaxed out of him. These words, wedged in by rote so long before, were still active in his fading brain. Though now playing out the last scene of his strange and eventful history, this man who had lied about his age to get into the Great War, who had spent his working life pushing a mail cart, found that neither wasteful war nor sluttish time could ever dissever his soul from the souls of those writers, those poets whose words rolled round his head, whose cadences had entered his soul, had become a part of him.
Вдумайтесь в это -- у человека мало что осталось от мозга, но в том, что осталось, накрепко угнездилось стихотворение лорда Теннисона. В своё время оно загнало его на мировую войну -- американца, ползать по Фландрии в противогазе.
Интересен также список канонических текстов, которые американцы знают (или, во всяком случае, раньше знали) наизусть -- за Теннисоном идут отрывки Библии, конституция, выступление Ильича на заводе Михельсона о том, как нам реорганизовать Рабкрин. Любопытно было бы составить такие списки для разных стран, я совсем не в курсе, что заучивают в школе в Англии.
"Sure you do, Dad," she said. "Half a league, half a league / Half a league onward." And to my amazement, Grandpa joined in. "All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred." Thirty, forty, fifty lines came rolling out of him. His voice deepened; the lines in his face relaxed. He was somewhere else.
The words were deep in his mind, close to the soul. As his brain shut down it had inexplicably chosen this to retain alive. Poem after poem, as well as the Gettysburg Address, the Preamble to the Constitution, the 23rd Psalm and many, many others, she coaxed out of him. These words, wedged in by rote so long before, were still active in his fading brain. Though now playing out the last scene of his strange and eventful history, this man who had lied about his age to get into the Great War, who had spent his working life pushing a mail cart, found that neither wasteful war nor sluttish time could ever dissever his soul from the souls of those writers, those poets whose words rolled round his head, whose cadences had entered his soul, had become a part of him.
Вдумайтесь в это -- у человека мало что осталось от мозга, но в том, что осталось, накрепко угнездилось стихотворение лорда Теннисона. В своё время оно загнало его на мировую войну -- американца, ползать по Фландрии в противогазе.
Интересен также список канонических текстов, которые американцы знают (или, во всяком случае, раньше знали) наизусть -- за Теннисоном идут отрывки Библии, конституция, выступление Ильича на заводе Михельсона о том, как нам реорганизовать Рабкрин. Любопытно было бы составить такие списки для разных стран, я совсем не в курсе, что заучивают в школе в Англии.