Brain science research shows that human brain develops rapidly before the age of 0-3, and by the age of 5, the weight of human brain has reached 80% of that of adult brain. Moreover, the development of neural connections in the human brain is based on the principle of "use it and discard it".
All these research results show that children's brains have unlimited potential, and their childhood is the most efficient stage of "learning" and should be fully utilized. So why choose the way of reciting? It is undeniable that memory is the basis of thinking, and a good memory helps to improve the accuracy and efficiency of information processing. In childhood, listening and reciting repeatedly is an important means to cultivate memory.
Ancient prose is an excellent literary work handed down from generation to generation. Although the sentence is concise, it has far-reaching significance and strong sense of rhythm. For children, they like rhythmic things. So memorizing ancient Chinese is just like learning songs for them, and it won't be boring.
Most people recite ancient poems with a strong utilitarian heart and task-driven mentality. These people see more the function of ancient poetry in the exam than the function of ancient poetry in life. So most of them are memorized before the exam, and they are forgotten soon after the exam.
The process of reciting not only does not feel the slightest pleasure, but also is a painful memory. Out of an instinctive self-protection, those painful memories will be preferentially erased from the mind, so these poems have become the first batch of "garbage" to be removed.