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[CCBC-Net] Reading like a child
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From: Sally Miller <derbymiller>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:08:29 -0400
I thought Claudia's point about the way children read was an excellent one. This is the gist of an email I sent to Perry yesterday on the matter of teaching children to read critically: How quickly, today, people think children need to grow up. When I was a child so many years ago and "lost" myself in a book, that's what I did--I lost myself, and became one with the heroine or hero, living in her or his world and never questioning that Maida's rich, but terribly busy father must be the best of all parents, to provide such fun things as shops and cottages and islands for her and her friends to enjoy. (I think she saw him once or twice a year.) I didn't wonder if Dr. Doolittle was an example of a white's assumed superiority, because obviously he was one of the smartest people in the world, having already achieved my life's ambition, to roam the world able to talk to all sorts of animals and being a benefactor to everyone he met--animal and human. Would I have grown into a better woman had I learned to question the implicit messages in those books? I certainly might have viewed the world around me as less magical, less benevolent, less trustworthy than I thought it to be. And though sometimes, in my own experience, life was a lot more dangerous and more hard-hearted than the life in my books, at least I had the refuge of the library and the books in there to reassure me that what I longed for did exist. I had to learn to master arithmetic, to introduce "perspective" into my artwork, to tread warily at home, and--at my father's insistence, identify all sorts of obnoxious smells that German bombs might inflict upon our little Ohio neighborhood, but at least I didn't have to wonder when I was reading why P.L. Travers portrayed Robertson Aye as lazy and shiftless--that's just the way he was.
I guess the point I'm tying to make is that, in my childhood, I may have been manipulated when I was reading, but I was safe, and I think I would have felt less safe if I had learned young to read critically. Could it be that in today's world, we can no longer allow children the luxury of being
"uncritical" in their reading? Sally Derby
Received on Tue 21 Jul 2009 07:08:29 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:08:29 -0400
I thought Claudia's point about the way children read was an excellent one. This is the gist of an email I sent to Perry yesterday on the matter of teaching children to read critically: How quickly, today, people think children need to grow up. When I was a child so many years ago and "lost" myself in a book, that's what I did--I lost myself, and became one with the heroine or hero, living in her or his world and never questioning that Maida's rich, but terribly busy father must be the best of all parents, to provide such fun things as shops and cottages and islands for her and her friends to enjoy. (I think she saw him once or twice a year.) I didn't wonder if Dr. Doolittle was an example of a white's assumed superiority, because obviously he was one of the smartest people in the world, having already achieved my life's ambition, to roam the world able to talk to all sorts of animals and being a benefactor to everyone he met--animal and human. Would I have grown into a better woman had I learned to question the implicit messages in those books? I certainly might have viewed the world around me as less magical, less benevolent, less trustworthy than I thought it to be. And though sometimes, in my own experience, life was a lot more dangerous and more hard-hearted than the life in my books, at least I had the refuge of the library and the books in there to reassure me that what I longed for did exist. I had to learn to master arithmetic, to introduce "perspective" into my artwork, to tread warily at home, and--at my father's insistence, identify all sorts of obnoxious smells that German bombs might inflict upon our little Ohio neighborhood, but at least I didn't have to wonder when I was reading why P.L. Travers portrayed Robertson Aye as lazy and shiftless--that's just the way he was.
I guess the point I'm tying to make is that, in my childhood, I may have been manipulated when I was reading, but I was safe, and I think I would have felt less safe if I had learned young to read critically. Could it be that in today's world, we can no longer allow children the luxury of being
"uncritical" in their reading? Sally Derby
Received on Tue 21 Jul 2009 07:08:29 AM CDT
