Recitatio
1st-12th Grade Curriculum for Memory and Delivery
"...since a ready memory is a useful thing, you see clearly with what great pains
we must strive to acquire so useful a faculty." - Rhetorica Ad Herennium
we must strive to acquire so useful a faculty." - Rhetorica Ad Herennium
Recitatio is a twelve-year recitation curriculum, providing content and instruction for students to memorize and deliver long passages of Scripture and great literature. The booklets in this curriculum...
- correspond with a grade level
- are divided into two semesters of material
- provide an overview and philosophy of recitation
- give instructional methods for teaching recitation
- offer assessment and evaluation tools for parents and instructors (7th-12th grade)
- have an original history timeline written in poetic form (3rd-6th grade)
Series Preface
In classical rhetoric, there are five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. For all five to be mastered, students should begin early. They should work steadily throughout their formal education to gain a greater love for and apprehension of these important rhetorical gifts. We somewhat know this of invention, arrangement, and style, which is why schools have not ceased having composition classes. But with the onslaught of modern conceptions of education, not only have memory and delivery been neglected, they have been maligned. We use the term “rote memory” as if it strips a person of their will, their imaginations, and their creativity. But this is not the case. It is indeed the opposite case.
Nature tells us, if we took the time to observe infants and toddlers, that rote memory is the most important component of a person’s intellectual development. And this does not cease to be the case. The great scholars in our Western tradition confirm that simply placing things in the memory is an important and preeminent human activity. The problem, though, is not with rote memory but with stopping the human mind too short, keeping the mind infantile; when we stop short we abandon the quest to seek understanding, to synthesize, to apprehend the concepts of what we have memorized. This tells us that rote memory isn’t the problem but rote living. If we want to learn, we had better start by being rote. If we want to be wise, we must go beyond being rote.
Recitatio is all about memory and delivery, the last two canons of classical rhetoric. It is twelve years of steadily placing in and around our students the best literature and ideas, with the aim of our students hiding those words in their minds and hearts. As the student grows, they ought to recall these good words and seek to befriend and understand them. But we must begin by acquiring them.
This class has been taught since Sequitur’s first year, and it was the class which received the most pushback from parents and students, for the reasons I’ve mentioned above. There was an expectation, even at a classical school, that rote memory would be traded for imaginative exploration, as if the two are at odds. Recitation was the class I found myself defending and explaining more than other classes. But that has now ceased. Seven years later students and parents have realized that the effort put forth in these exercises, the words being memorized and delivered in these exercises, and the fruit of these exercises speak for themselves. I am proud to get to a point where this curriculum can be printed, bound, and widely distributed for others willing and ready to join us in this important work.
Brian G. Daigle
Thursday of Proper 12, 2018; Baton Rouge
Nature tells us, if we took the time to observe infants and toddlers, that rote memory is the most important component of a person’s intellectual development. And this does not cease to be the case. The great scholars in our Western tradition confirm that simply placing things in the memory is an important and preeminent human activity. The problem, though, is not with rote memory but with stopping the human mind too short, keeping the mind infantile; when we stop short we abandon the quest to seek understanding, to synthesize, to apprehend the concepts of what we have memorized. This tells us that rote memory isn’t the problem but rote living. If we want to learn, we had better start by being rote. If we want to be wise, we must go beyond being rote.
Recitatio is all about memory and delivery, the last two canons of classical rhetoric. It is twelve years of steadily placing in and around our students the best literature and ideas, with the aim of our students hiding those words in their minds and hearts. As the student grows, they ought to recall these good words and seek to befriend and understand them. But we must begin by acquiring them.
This class has been taught since Sequitur’s first year, and it was the class which received the most pushback from parents and students, for the reasons I’ve mentioned above. There was an expectation, even at a classical school, that rote memory would be traded for imaginative exploration, as if the two are at odds. Recitation was the class I found myself defending and explaining more than other classes. But that has now ceased. Seven years later students and parents have realized that the effort put forth in these exercises, the words being memorized and delivered in these exercises, and the fruit of these exercises speak for themselves. I am proud to get to a point where this curriculum can be printed, bound, and widely distributed for others willing and ready to join us in this important work.
Brian G. Daigle
Thursday of Proper 12, 2018; Baton Rouge