There's an outlaw on Glenidol that is known through all the West, And three men's lives are on his head, bold riders of the best; The station lads have heard the sneer that travelled far and wide, And flung the answering challenge: "Come and teach us how to ride!"
My father was a drover in outback Queensland. His father died when my father was 11 years old and his mother was in poverty. So my father went out to work as a drover with men driving cattle from the stations in to the rail head at Quilpie.
At night, the men would sit around the campfire and tell stories often through bush poetry. My father was 11 years old when he started and left school in grade 3. Yet he knew many poems that he would recite to me as a little boy. He learned the poems off by heart around the campfire.
I was 7 years old and heard so many bush poems while sitting on my father's knee. By the time I was 10 years old, I knew his favourite poems off by heart.
I am amazed even today nearly 65 years later that the poems are still with me. There is a lesson here for teaching children in elementary school. They have a massive capacity to learn by phonics. I learned the rhythm and rhyme of bush poetry that contributes to the polish of my writing today.
The google report above has stolen my thunder a little as the poem Riding of the Rebel is recorded above in all its glory. It is the poem I learned as a small boy verse by verse on my father's knee.
This experience has had a deep influence on me as a teacher. It convinced me of the importance of reciting, memorising, chanting, reading, debate, lecturettes and answering in rhyme and rhythm. These poems taught me hundreds of words as a child.
My father would sing lullabies to me as a small boy and my brothers and sisters. I remember all the little songs he used to sing to us. The song below is probably 200 years old. Drummer boys were part of the army in the Crimean War.
Little drummer boy
l x l x l
You're all the world to me
x l x l x l
dressed up in your little soldier clothes.
x l x x l x l x l
Now day is ended little drummer boy.
x l x x l x x l x l
Lights out were sounded long ago.
l x x l x l x l
So close your eyes my little drummer boy
x l x l x l x l x l
And dream of those who love you so.
x l x l x l x l
I have been amazed that my younger daughter in PNG sings this song to her baby son. She learned the song from me. She was a top student in English at school. She says that English is her first language.
The overriding sound in many PNG classrooms is SILENCE. The silence in high schools began in primary school.
But then we read in the media of the influence of cults to intimidate brighter students into saying nothing in class. Many children do not understand the English spoken by the teacher and can not respond.
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