Tech vs Book

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about technology and children. Opinions on how much time kids should spend on technology, what kinds of technology they should use, the educational benefits of technology, the rules parents should set about technology are as wide and hot (I mean varying) as the sun. 

We are spending so much time worrying about technology. 

Every single person has a limited amount of time each day. Twenty-four hours, sixteen if you sleep. How much of that time do we fritter away? I know I fritter, and I consciously try not to. But when I have no plan of action, my time melts away before my eyes, gone in a flash, and there is too little to show for it. 

The same is doubly true for our children. When I think of the time I wasted watching television as a child, I truly, truly want to cry. What could I have done with that time? Hours and hours and hours of time? Anything, probably. Dream, learn, grow, play, serve, make friends. And I can't get it back. 

Check out this article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/07/children-reading-fun-fallen-study

Here are the opening paragraphs:

The proportion of children reading for pleasure has declined as their time is crowded with other activities, and more than a fifth never read in their own time, according to research published on Friday.

The study, which finds a clear link between reading outside class and high achievement in school, reveals that fewer children are reading comics and magazines.

The research by the National Literacy Trust was based on a study of more than 21,000 children carried out last year.

It finds that text messages are the most commonly read material outside of class.

This is not about high quality, excellent literature. Fewer children are reading comic books and magazines. Text messages are the most commonly read material outside of class. 

How much time are our children spending texting?

In 2005, four out of ten children said they read outside of school in their free time. Now, just eight years later, it's three out of ten. 

Even if you don't care about reading, your kids won't be high achievers in school if they don't read at home. They won't. They simply won't. 

And now the standards are being raised all across the country. David Coleman, the man who orchestrated the language arts portion of the common core, recently said this in a lecture to educators.

"It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.” Translation to the classroom: No more primary grade essays about lost teeth or middle school essays about prepubescent angst. Instead, students must provide critical analysis of the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic." 

This is real. "Allegory of the Cave" is listed as an exemplary informational text in the common core for twelve year olds, as is Reagan's "Address to Students at Moscow State University." Our kids are going to be asked to read and understand and analyze difficult stuff at younger and younger ages. 

Whether you agree with these fundamental changes to our schools or not, it is coming. Actually, it's here. I recently heard a lecture where the common core was described as the biggest educational shift in the past fifty years in America, bigger even than No Child Left Behind. 

(Read this article if you are interested in learning more about the Common Core and how David Coleman and his beliefs are changing the world (He is now the president of the College Board and has plans to completely revamp the ACT and the SAT so that they are "knowledge based.") 

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2716 )

Will our kids be ready? No. Not if they are not getting some serious reading in at home. Because there isn't time for them to play catch up in school. There just isn't time. 

They have to read at home. They have to. 

So I suggest this. Instead of worrying about technology, let's worry about reading. Let's make time to read. Let's force our kids to make time to read in whatever way we, as parents, feel is best. 

Forget about technology! Somehow, make it a non-issue! Technology is not going to save our children. It is not going to help them create a critical analysis of the "Allegory of the Cave." But great comic books with fabulous stories and fabulous words that suck our kids in until they can't stop reading just might save them. Great comic books like Tin Tin, and Asterix. (Seriously, have you read the language in those things? Awesome.)

Here's a picture book list for today. Get thee to the library!!! (And drop the iPhones in the book return on the way in. He he.) 

Dogs on Duty by Dorothy Patent

Charlie's First Night by Amy Hest

Demolition by Sally Sutton

Dreaming Up by Christy Hale

Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns by Hena Kahn

Goldie Locks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems

Hippopposites by Janik Coat

Just Ducks by Nicola Davies

 

When everything comes together...

Friday, I read aloud to Lucy's fifth grade classroom. They were mesmerized by these two books:


A Weave of Words by Robert San Souci


Lincoln Tells a Joke: How Laughter Saved the President (And the Country) by Kathleen Krull

They were mesmerized. They were mesmerized because A Weave of Words is a terribly exciting story. You have to find out what happens. It is awesome, and after that, they were mesmerized by the Abraham Lincoln book because they all knew that Abe Lincoln was honest, but did they know he was funny? And did they know he was funny and relied on his sense of humor in the most dire of circumstances? They didn't, and they loved finding it out.

It was truly awesome. Every ear in that classroom was glued to the words in those stories, even the ESL girl who came here from China only six months earlier.

That is the power of a good story.

Then fast-forward to Saturday. After a cello lesson, I talked with Lucy's teacher for a moment. He came from a home of seven children, not much money, but chock-full of books. Their dad read them Beowulf  out loud at the dinner table. For fun. And all seven children are brilliant. "Idiot Savants," he told me. Then he bemoaned the future of kids today. "None of my students read," he said. "None of them even own a book! And these are children of educated parents who should know better!" His wife is a high school English teacher and she is no longer allowed to have her children read novels like they used to. They now read passages from things. Non-fiction articles. Maybe one or two novels a year.

Not an hour later I was driving to pick Mary up from a rehearsal, musing on what I'd talked about with our cello teacher, and I heard this story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/19/169798643/new-reading-standards-aim-to-prep-kids-for-college-but-at-what-cost

Listen to this story. It's not long. Eleven minutes. Or you can read the text. Even if your eyes roll to the back of your head when you hear the words Common Core. Even if you think this is just another passing educational craze. Read this article, because you are wrong. The Common Core is serious stuff, and it is completely changing what happens at school for our kids. (Unless you live in Texas, Virginia, Minnesota, and Nebraska which didn't adopt the Core) And we need to know as parents what this means and what is changing in our schools.

Without question, the core will mean that fewer novels are read in school. There isn't the time anymore, teachers have so much to cover, and the emphasis isn't there, so any state, any school, any teacher serious about adopting the Common Core standards is going to assign fewer whole novels.

What does this mean?

It means that it will become an increasingly rare experience for children to fall into a book, read it from beginning to end, and leave hungry for more, like Lucy's class experienced on Friday.

It means that this must now happen at home if we want our kids to love reading. This reading MUST happen at home.

I say this as a frustrated parent. I homeschool my third grader and he reads upwards of two hundred pages a day of literature, social studies, science. He is reading books from every decade, nonfiction books on every subject, novels of every sort. He reads constantly, and I can see it in his comprehension and his writing and just the way he talks in general.

Then there's my first grader who's in the public schools. I've bemoaned before that he will come home from school having not cracked a book. I know that doesn't mean he doesn't read. I know there are words and sentences all around him all day long at school. But he's still not reading, and when he gets home, he's my least likely to crack a book.

But reading—reading—is different than just decoding and deciphering words. We all know this to be true, so why are we taking this away from kids? Why aren't we encouraging it more at home? How many books are in your shelves at home? How many books do your children own themselves? I went to Walmart today. It is very telling that the number of children's books in that store could fit on one/tenth of an aisle, but the movie/video game/technology section of the store takes up an entire corner. I complained about this to Sam, and he said, "It's demand, honey. If people were buying books, Walmart would have a huge section of books."

We could change that. We really could. If people started buying books with the same vigor they bought video games and movies, what would happen in our country? They are estimating now that about fifty-percent of children graduating from high school this year will have to take at least one remedial course in college to get them ready for freshman level courses.

Let's make sure our children do not fit into that fifty percent.



Even if you listen to this article and you agree with David Coleman