Poetry is enjoyed by all cultures and has been for centuries. But the Arabian tradition has embraced poetry as an important educational tool, and Western educational systems can learn from this approach too. When reading about different approaches to learning, poetry seems not to be considered very often. When discussing the value of auditory methods, for example, researchers and educators often talk about things like ‘reading out loud’ and listening to ‘lectures’, but there are very few pieces of research that offer listening to poems as a useful learning tool. And many of those who champion the need for poetry education cite its benefits to child wellbeing and the development of empathy in children (National Literacy Trust, 2024). This, of course, is a good thing, but it is also limiting, since poetry in education has the potential for so much more.
Many British schoolchildren will be familiar with the fate of Henry VIII’s six wives:
“Divorced, beheaded, died;
Divorced, beheaded, survived.”
These very simple six words make it very easy to remember the fate of six important figures in British history, and this is achieved through rhyme. And who can forget the classic:
“My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets”.
This second example isn’t exactly poetry, but it represents a form of word play and artistry to remember important facts.
The Arab tradition places a much larger emphasis on poetry for the purpose of teaching concepts, sometimes even difficult concepts. One example would be the very famous Alfiyyah of Ibn Maalik, which is a one-thousand-line poem used to teach grammar. There are other poems too, in jurisprudence, history and many other sciences. Poems to entertain are also, of course, a huge part of Arab culture, as they are in other cultures too. But where classical Arabic education seems to diverge from the Western style of education today is that it does not limit poetry to literature. Poems can be used to teach anything and, indeed, they are used to teach anything.
A 1978 study by Sheingold & Foundas compared two groups of children. The groups heard the same story, but one group heard the story in prose, and the other group heard it in the form of a poem. Those who heard the story in verse were significantly better at remembering the sequence of events than those who heard it in prose, although the two groups recalled a similar amount of story content overall. A much more recent study published by Santa Clara University has also argued about the benefits of poetry in learning, especially in vocabulary development. It shouldn’t be very surprising to anyone that things are easier to learn through verse, and many people would be able to accurately remember the verses of their favorite songs for years and even decades. What is surprising, to me at least, is why we are not using this superpower more in education.
To this end, I have tried to practice what I preach and have put together a historical poem on one of my favorite school subjects, history. It loosely covers what is taught in British schools, and I hope it will be a useful tool for students and lovers of history alike.
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