Raising Readers
I joked on another blog recently that I was raising readers the old-fashioned way: by making sure they have nothing else to do but read. It’s somewhat true; we aren’t awash in extra-curricular activities, I permit very little television, and I let them leave the light on at night to read. I believe in this approach, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wake up at night occasionally, and wonder if I’m depriving my children. It’s been on my mind lately.
A few months ago as we drove home from dropping my 4-year-old off at nursery school, my 7-year-old cleared her throat and spoke up from the back seat. “You know, I’m not really a big fan of Dr. Suess,” she said, in a tone that suggested she was trying to let me down easily.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, he’s kind of… for kids,” she ventured. “And the pictures are… silly-looking.”
“They’re imaginative,” I replied. “They’re not supposed to look like real things.”
“Well… I like Bill Peet,” she said bravely.
Indeed she does. Her Christmas list contains four Bill Peet books — and nothing else.
I liked the fact that we were having a literary discussion, and that she was distinguishing between authors — even though according to the conventional wisdom of Classical Education, she’s supposed to be simply absorbing information at this stage, and not analyzing. That isn’t emphasized till grades 5-8, the logic stage. Oh well.
I’m not sure why it pleases me so much that she, and her younger sister, are focused on books. There’s nothing inherently more virtuous about books than about other media. But I wanted to make some observations of the way books function in our family.
Books may be a more shared bond between children and parents than, say, cartoons or other children’s media. We start out reading to our children; we can’t plop them in front of a book and expect them to amuse themselves. So we have a shared imaginative territory that I’m not sure we’d have if I left them to children’s television, which I most likely wouldn’t have the patience or interest to experience along with them.
I like that when we see animals around the yard, we all know the source of the names we give them — “Unc’ Billy Possum” from the Thornton Burgess books, “Timmy Tiptoes” from Beatrix Potter, etc.
I also like that when I need an illustration to explain some concept, we have that shared repository to draw from. I forget who it was that referred to education as “furnishing the mind,” but it’s a great metaphor. When my 4-year-old gets her heart broken because someone won’t sit next to her, I can use the Frog and Toad story “Alone” to illustrate that just because someone wants some space, it doesn’t mean they aren’t your friend anymore. When my older daughter wonders why she should bother praying because how could God hear when everyone is talking to him at once, I can refer to the story of the woman who touched Jesus’s robe on the crowded street, and he felt it. When someone’s being a bully, Bill Peet’s Kweeks of Kookamundee provides a ready picture of the way bullies find themselves alone.
I think television or movies could just as easily provide these examples. It’s just that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know about them.
Of course I’m a believer in the higher-level thinking and imaginative energy that go into reading as well. Just this morning, Oswald Chambers suggested that “health is the balance between physical life and external nature, and it is maintained only by sufficient vitality on the inside against things on the outside.” There’s something in me that objects to the warlike view of experience. But I think he’s right. He’s talking about spiritual strength, strength of will, strength of character. I think strength of mind is directly related to these, and this is one way I’m sure books win out over the more passive forms of media. Reading takes more mental effort, and rereading builds those observational powers.
Nothing really new here, maybe. But I felt the need to go back over this ground anyway.
