From: fairrosa
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 23:34:22 -0400

HUMMINGRK at aol.com wrote:

"Our society as a whole and children in particular are becoming more and more visual in their sensory perception of the world."

I would like to comment that:

1. The history of children as readers and children as text?sed learners is a short one. Simply step back a coupld of hundred years, and we would find that children always learned by utilizing various senses and via various media -- a picture is worth a thousand words -- when was this first uttered/written???

2. The world is full of images and sounds and smells and textures... it is the Natural Way to learn. Our society simply has only recently figured out ways to produce and disseminate visual and audio "data" more readily than a hundred years ago. We are not more visual, we are just more capable of producing and delivering information visually. Before there were words (textual), there were cave-paintings (visual).

Before my daughter was born and I was working in as a public library children's librarian, I thought that I would be reading lots of
"concept" books to her -- books about colors, vegetables, sounds, etc. After she was born, I found out that it was way more enjoyable to SEE and HEAR the world with her. Oh, yes, we looked at some concept books because of the stunning art work -- because I would like her to be able to also appreciate artistic representations of the world. But she really did not need dozens of books to teach her colors -- they are around her all day long. She does not need many books listing vegetable and flower names -- we shop and identify many things in the supermarket all the time.

Children learn about the world by observing, experiencing, and reading when they cannot observe or experience something first hand. But they are born to be multi-sensory creatures -- we all are. Reading texts is but one way, and not always the most desirable way, to make sense of the world.

-- fairrosa
Received on Tue 23 Apr 2002 10:34:22 PM CDT