Sadly it seems that no one, not least of all our blessed poets, bothered to do their homework. In response, Stacey has stated quite explicitly that “it is not a requirement of the exam for students to memorise text”. So there we have it. We can all breathe a sigh of relief—or disappointment. True, students will not be allowed to bring their own textbooks into the exam because it’s too easy to cheat by cramming them full of annotations. Instead, they will be presented with an unseen text and asked to discuss it in relation to works within the anthology. That’s it. To do this, they will need to have a good basic knowledge of the poems, yes. They will need to grasp similarities and differences in theme and style, yes. They will need to have some quotations to hand and some arguments at the ready, yes. But will they need to memorise any poem, word for word, by rote? No. If the unseen text in my exam happened to be “Strange Meeting”, then I would need to compare its use of half rhyme with whole rhyme in, say, a Shakespearean sonnet. But to do so, would I need to stand on a chair and say the sonnet over and over until I go mad? No. Would I be forced to recite it until iambic pentameter bleeds out of my ears? No. Would I be put off poetry forever and forever? Probably not, either.

What a storm in a triolet! But why does the spectre of rote learning arouse such powerful emotions? Why is it regarded as a diabolical blasphemy against education? Why has it fallen into such disfavour?

For a wonderfully dispassionate guide to this debate, there is no better book than Catherine Robson’s magisterial Heart Beats: Everyday Life and the Memorized Poem (Princeton, £30.95). Neither sentimentalist nor cynic, Robson traces the glory days of the memorised poem from the late 18th century to the Second World War. Prior to this, the first reading for almost all children was doctrinal: “the ABC with the catechism, the primer, the psalter, the Prayer Book, biblical passages and varied prayers and graces.” In the 1700s, infant readers continued to be fed on a diet of morally improving texts, but older children were given literary extracts to aid elocution. Of the former, “How doth the little busy bee” was a particular favourite, and popular enough to be mocked by Lewis Carroll as “How doth the little crocodile” in Alice In Wonderland. Of the latter, recitations from Milton and Shakespeare were typical standards.

Revolution came with the arrival of universal education in the 19th century and the establishment of the elementary school, the main engine of memorisation. Money drove the practice; from 1862 there was a direct link between successful classroom recitation and the size of a school’s budget, presumably because this kind of performance was easy to test by visiting inspectors. By 1882, the whole of the English curriculum consisted of recitation, from knowing 20 lines of simple verse at the first level to 150 lines at the last. Yet the money went hand in hand with social reform. The poet and critic Matthew Arnold, in his role as a school inspector, saw memorisation as a great equaliser. He said, “It is strange that a lesson of such old standing and such high credit in our schools for the rich should not sooner have been introduced in our schools for the poor.” Within its “mass of treasures” were discipline, intellectual and spiritual nourishment, and an encounter with literary genius.    

Robson shows that, inevitably, Arnold’s ideals were not always the reality. School inspector John Morley complained in 1868 that while he heard every child in a classroom “read with apparent fluency from his or her reading book, not one of them could read the simplest words in a similar, but hitherto unseen, volume”. Later, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor of the famous Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, described the depressing spectacle of poverty-stricken Cornish children reciting poetry of which they had no understanding, let alone enjoyment.