Kindergartners know Lincoln speech by heart

Orange County Register (CA) ^ | February 11, 2012 | By ERIC CARPENTER

[Oldeconomybuyer]

ANAHEIM – They adjusted their black-cotton beards and their Lincoln-stovepipe hats that stood almost as tall as them. Then, in unison, the 19 kindergarteners began:

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent ..."

From beginning to end, Room 4 at Fairmont Private School recited from memory the entire Gettysburg Address – President Lincoln's 1863 speech, widely regarded as among the best speeches in American history.

With words such as "endure," "dedicate" and "consecrate." The 5- and 6-year-olds got through them all.

Their teacher, Patsy Bauman, began teaching her students the address in December, in honor of the 16th president's birthday on Sunday.

Bauman, the daughter of an Army colonel, said she learned the Gettysburg Address when she was 4 years old and recited it front of her classmates for the first time in second grade.

"It taught me confidence and the ability to speak in front of a crowd," she said.

The class, invited by Mayor Tom Tait, recited it Tuesday at the City Council meeting, bringing a roomful of people to their feet with applause.

They performed it again Friday in front of the entire Fairmont campus. Bauman even sent a letter to the White House, just in case the current administration was interested in a performance. She's yet to hear back.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[KarlInOhio]

For their first grade project they can memorize and recite Edward Everett's Gettysburg speech.

[Publius]

All three and a half hours of it?

I went through this in the 7th grade in the Catholic school system, and the nun kept telling me to suck my voice down lower. (This ended up being my radio voice years later.) I tried to explain to her that Lincoln wasn't a baritone, but a high tenor. That didn't sit well with her.

[SkyDancer]

Good. Now ask them what it means.

[Cicero]

This wouldn’t have been news back before the Cultural Revolution. I memorized the Gettysburg Address when I was a kid in public school, and I imagine most kids did.

Now, we’re lucky if they know who Abe Lincoln is, especially since congress did away with his official birthday.

[Repeal The 17th]

-
“We, ‘The People’, are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts,
not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
~Abraham Lincoln
-

[Uncle Ike]

Back when I was in grade school, everybody was required to mdmorize the Gettysburg Address when the History Class got to the Civil War...

Now, when a few kids memorize it, it makes the papers..

sigh

[Fiji Hill]

For their first grade project they can memorize and recite Edward Everett's Gettysburg speech.

"Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;-grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy..."

Read more here

[Conservative4Ever]

Yep, Jr high...had to recite the Gettysburg Address before the class, as did everyone. Good public speaking experience.

[jackibutterfly]

"Now, when a few kids memorize it, it makes the papers.."

Yes, BUT, they're kindergartners. That's impressive, in MY book.

[jackibutterfly]

AND, in Calif., yet!

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

When I was in elementary school we had to memorize the last part of Patrick Henry's speech and the Preamble to the Constitution. Even though Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was part of the curriculum, we were not required to memorize it.

The Gettysburg Address was part of my father's (from NJ) repertoire on long car trips. The four of us can repeat “Four score and seven years ago” but that was where it ends, because that is when we tuned him out. :)

[fortheDeclaration]

Nice to see a teacher actually teaching children to use their minds.

This great speech was Biblical in it's tone and symbolism.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Oldeconomybuyer. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.