We think of ourselves as a literate society, but the truth is that we’re fooling ourselves.
Just because we can read, doesn’t mean we can read. Just because we can write, does not mean we can write. Unless we are educating our kids to be readers of difficult books, and writers of persuasive essays which they are capable of doing, we are short-changing them.
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In the current school system, they've lost the spirit of reading and reading is just another subject to be tested on. Children are taught to read too early, too, which hinders their chances of falling in love with reading for its own sake.
“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”
If you want your child to become a good reader, you should teach him/her to read when they are developmentally ready, and reading should be something they learn to do for pleasure.
Not to pass an exam.
If you have young children, then you are probably much younger than I and, therefore, you were probably not taught to read the same way I was taught.
Let me share my reading experience with you in the hopes that you might imitate it with your own children and raise good readers despite this illiterate time.
It will be a mammoth feat if you can do it. I believe you can.
Here's My Story:
Miss. Gilman was my first-grade teacher, and she taught me to read when I was six.
Maybe it was her high-heeled black pumps that let you know she was headed your way, or her bright red lipstick that never seemed to fade, but I was a little afraid of Miss Gilman. I was also in awe of her. I think we all were.
I have no recollection of struggling to learn, only that she gave us our instructions and within days I was reading. Learning how to read unlocked the door to another world for me, a world of fascinating characters where anything and everything was possible.
I would get lost in my books for hours, and for hours every day, I got lost.
One thing was sure back then: reading was never treated as a chore. It was never something we did for school work. We read to enjoy the story as it unfolded in our minds, and as we fell in love with certain characters in our books.
Each book I read became my favorite book. Each character left its mark in my memory, influencing my ideas about the world and who I was.
We were never assigned books to read. Instead, we were taken to the school library and allowed to choose books that we wanted to read.
Miss Gilman never asked me to write a single book report. During my elementary years, I don't remember writing a book report for any of my teachers.
That was my experience learning to read in school. No reading assignments. No book reports. No testing.
Freedom to choose from a selection of books.
My life at home supported Miss Gilman's approach to reading too.
At home, books were treated as something special. My father modeled reading for us as he always had a book in his hand. Not just any book, but a classic book, and those were the books he would gift us with too.
He introduced us to the great Western canon of literature. We even had a library in our house, a room that was lined with built-in shelves and dedicated entirely to books.
In both school and the home, reading was introduced to me as something enjoyable. I looked forward to reading like I would look forward to riding my bike or playing with a friend.
Today's children don't look forward to reading, and they hardly read anymore. There are multiple reasons for this; one of them is the way learning to read taught to schoolchildren.
Children are taught to read when they are still too young, they grow frustrated because of it, and they subsequently develop a negative association with reading.
Not all children, but too many children. When was the last time you saw a child reading in public? For me, it was four years ago. I remember precisely where too.
I was going into Home Goods, and as I entered through the doors, my eyes fell on a little girl curled up in a couch, and she had a open book in her hand.
I haven't witnessed a child reading in public since.
Contributing further to a decline in reading are the tests children are given to determine their reading skills and the boring book reports they are required to write.
To add insult to injury, too many children lose confidence in their intelligence when their level of reading is less than others in the class.
Why do we teach a skill so vital to acquiring knowledge in such a careless way? If children are not good readers today, shouldn't we try to understand why and correct the problem?
But we don't. Instead, we carry on making the same mistakes we've been making ever since children decided that reading wasn't worth their time.
Be a prudent parent by teaching your child to love reading before you put him/her into the school system.
Don't take the chance of letting the school mess up the one skill that will ultimately impact your child's level of intelligence and understanding.
Dumbed-Down was the phrase John Taylor Gatto used in the title his book about the miseries of public education.
If you're homeschooling, your chances of raising a good reader are much, much higher than if you put your child into school.
No tests. No book reports. No assigned reading until they are older.
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Model reading for your children. Surround your home with great books. Discuss books with other adults and let your children overhear your conversations. Give books a priority in your home, and your children will learn to prioritize books.
How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.
Homeschool the smart way by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child the best of an elite education at home.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.
Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time towards helping parents get it right.
Neil Postman made an argument in 1982 that childhood was disappearing because multi-media erased the boundary between what adults knew and what children knew.
In the same vein, he warned us, so is adulthood disappearing.
A pathetic statistic is that adult television shows cater to the mentality of a twelve-year-old child, according to Postman, who wrote the prescient book, The Disappearance of Childhood.
Isn’t that mortifying?!
The literate world of adults was the boundary that separated children from adults. With everyone plugged into the same immature television shows, and few people reading today, that boundary is disappearing.
Childhood / adulthood aren’t the only things at risk of becoming obsolete. We call ourselves a literate society, but are we, really?
When we declared ourselves a literate country, there was no television and, if you could read, you read at more sophisticated levels because it was pre-dumbed-down America.
This is no longer true. Writers who write for the average public intentionally use less vocabulary and shorter sentences to meet the demands of a populace of poor readers.
Yet, if we understand the mechanics of reading and writing at a basic level, we’re classified as literate even if we can’t do either well.
Someone who can barely run around the block, however, can hardly be called a runner. Someone who can barely hit the ball over the net can hardly be called a tennis player, someone who knows how to make a hotdog can hardly be called a cook.
We aren’t labeled a runner, a tennis player, or a cook until we can perform at an intermediate level, at least. Until then, we’re learning how to do said skill.
Out of curiosity, I looked up UNESCO's definition of literacy. Not surprisingly, the definition changed around the time institutionalized schooling took root.
UNESCO used to define literacy as an ability to read and write (presumably well) to the following mumbo jumbo:
Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society (UNESCO, 2004; 2017).
“You can teach children to hate reading, to do it poorly, and to hate themselves for not measuring up to the false premises of institutional reading practices–premises which provide the foundation of our multi-billion dollar reading industry.”
If we redefine literacy to include only those people who were proficient readers, and by proficient reader I mean someone who could read, discuss and write about a piece of work such as The Federalists Papers or The Iliad, we'd have to conclude that we're mostly an illiterate society.
Before you decide my suggestion is literacy ad absurdum, consider this:
Our standards for literacy are so low that if an adult can read a simple newspaper article and underline what the swimmer ate, we classify him as literate.
Lest you think I'm being facetious, here's a question, taken from a newspaper article, that was on the National Adult Literacy Test:
Q. Underline the sentence that tells what Ms. Chanin ate during the swim.
A. A spokesman for the swimmer, Roy Brunett, said Chanin had kept up her strength with "banana and honey sandwiches, hot chocolate, lots of water and granola bars."
As long as someone can make out the spelling of banana, which is not difficult to do, he can figure out that this is the correct sentence to underline.
But is this the right approach? Shouldn’t we raise the standards, so we educate our children to become adults who can tackle difficult reading material?
You probably have school-age children whose education you’re concerned about. These are the years when you want to put a lot of effort into training your children's minds.
You can train them to run intellectual circles around the rest of us, or you can train them to underline what a swimmer ate; the choice is yours.
Let me offer you a hand by sharing a few strategies you can use to keep the door of knowledge open for your children:
With any bad habit we try to break, the first step is to get rid of the obstacles keeping us from adopting the new habit. In this case, we should start with our screens.
A movie on the weekends for older children is plenty, if they ask. Other than that, keep the screens tucked away someplace.
To take this step requires an understanding that if you want more for your child, if you want him to rise above the less-than-mediocre standards today, then you will need to make some sacrifices.
Let me ask you a question: do you have a television in your living room so you can watch the news every evening?
For many of us, keeping screens hidden is a burden because they're so much a part of our lives now. We depend upon them for many things such as answers to quick questions, the latest news, and frying our brains.
Speaking of frying our brains, the other day I went to a piano recital where my son was performing. The recitals are usually in a church, and so there's an unspoken understanding that it isn't a place for chitchat or smartphones. But this last recital was in the Steinway piano store.
We got there just before it started, so we had no choice but to sit in the back. It turned out that the back of the room was where all the parenting smartphone addicts sat. My God, the number of mothers glued to their phones was astounding.
The only time they looked up was when their own child performed.
They have no idea what they missed.
Anyhow books (nor piano recitals) can successfully compete with screen time. It's a known fact which anyone can easily test without leaving home.
Find like-minded families to raise your children with; people who will support your values and your high standards rather than undermine them. (And be that family for someone else.)
Company matters.
If you can't find like-minded families, start talking about your concerns until someone will listen, but don't give up. Someone will eventually listen and be brave enough to do what Neil Postman advises us to do, go against the culture.
“There are parents who are committed to doing all of these things [no screens], who are in effect defying the directives of their cultures. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. ”
If our culture is producing mediocrity, then we can't do what everyone else is doing. We have to muster up the courage to go against the grain of society.
To become a truly rebellious spirit, line your walls with good books and start reading everyday to your children. If you aren't a reader yourself, have faith that you can become one.
Many people who weren’t formerly good readers chose to become good readers in adulthood, but it takes determination and perseverance.
You can do it. I know people who have.
Everything is in a state of flux; you are either flexing the noodle between your ears and making it stronger, or you aren't.
Create a culture of wonder and learning in your home. Have intelligent discussions with your children about the great ideas, history, science, literature, philosophy, and so forth.
Raising and educating children today takes a lot of work; it always did. We're used to delegating the task to the government with the consequence of getting a child who is not all that he or she could be.
Mediocre is not the same as excellent or, for that matter, even very good.
The brain is a phenomenal organ, and it grows with the right kind of stimulation. It houses the mind like the body houses the soul.
Let it be a great mind.
How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader, free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.
Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child an elite education at home.
Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education. She has two successfully homeschooled children in college.
Smart Homeschool Planning with Elizabeth Y. Hanson, Homeschooling Expert and Certified Parenting Coach
Illustration images by Anne Yvonne Gilbert
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