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Feb. 28th, 2008 09:38 amBack in Ye Goode Olde Dayes, when schools were a constant frenzy of beatings and brutality*, children would have lengthy poems drummed into them as part of the education process. It wasn't unusual for people to be able recite the entirety of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or The wreck of the Hesperus at the drop of a hat.
This was probably a good thing as training the brain young to process, store and recall large amounts of information has long-term benefits in life.
The thing about the brain when you're young is that it doesn't know what is important and so tries to remember everything, just in case. Without the sort of training above, the brain just acts as an information sponge and soaks up whatever it can - which explains why I can recite the lyrics to Ian Gillans No laughing in heaven at the drop of a hat almost 30 years after it came out. I used to be able to do a fair stab at reciting the entire script of Jean-Claude van Damme's Bloodsport as well.
This is a pretty damning indictment of how I spent my youth.
So there's the question for the day: What can you recite from when you were a kid, having learned it off by heart before you realised what a waste of time and brain-space doing so was?
*By the teachers, that is. These days it's by the pupils, and on YouTube.
This was probably a good thing as training the brain young to process, store and recall large amounts of information has long-term benefits in life.
The thing about the brain when you're young is that it doesn't know what is important and so tries to remember everything, just in case. Without the sort of training above, the brain just acts as an information sponge and soaks up whatever it can - which explains why I can recite the lyrics to Ian Gillans No laughing in heaven at the drop of a hat almost 30 years after it came out. I used to be able to do a fair stab at reciting the entire script of Jean-Claude van Damme's Bloodsport as well.
This is a pretty damning indictment of how I spent my youth.
So there's the question for the day: What can you recite from when you were a kid, having learned it off by heart before you realised what a waste of time and brain-space doing so was?
*By the teachers, that is. These days it's by the pupils, and on YouTube.
