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

 

Getting your kids to read to each other

Sometimes my children are so wonderful, they read books to each other without me asking them to.

Sometimes my children are pretty wonderful and they read to each other when I ask them to.

And sometimes my children won't read to each other without serious harassment and threats of other jobs.

Hmm. I don't like threatening when reading is involved (though I am perfectly happy threatening them about other things like chores—I'm especially good about threatening with treats and not following through with my threats. Like giving them treats anyway, even when they haven't done everything as I asked them too. I am consistently inconsistent in this regard... which makes me pretty wonderful too, I suppose).

So the solution to this problem—when they won't read to each other—would just be to not make them read to each other.

But I love it when they read to each other. I love it. They love it. Really. Most of the time. Once they get going.

So sometimes I pay them.

This is probably illegal in some states. I mean, you shouldn't have to pay your children to do a service like that, right? And if you pay them for reading to each other sometimes, will they ever read to each other without getting money?

I do not know the answers to those questions, they are too deep for me, but I've discovered that I am willing to pay my children to do things I think are really, really good for them. Consequences, shmonsequences.

The other day I asked Shaemus (who really needed to do some reading aloud—always worried that kid isn't reading enough) to read aloud to Flannery (who could always use some more read aloud time and will take it from anyone, anytime, anyplace). Sometimes he will do it for fun, but he was in the middle of building himself a rocket ship out of cardboard (something I highly approve of) and didn't want to be interrupted. I knew he would go back to the rocket ship the second he was done, so I wasn't worrying about interrupting his creativity, and Flannery really needed some attention I couldn't give her.

"Two dollars," I told Shaemus. "If you read Flannery fifteen books of your choice (not baby books), you can have two dollars."

And this was the result:
http://youtu.be/QZbqZPGorEQ

Please excuse the quality of this video. I was trying to be sneaky. I didn't want them to know what I was doing, and they didn't until Shaemus's head turned. If you can make it that far in the video, notice when I finally focus in on Flannery's face, how fascinated she is by the story. She doesn't care how imperfectly Shaemus is reading. She is so involved, she can't even suck her finger properly (we're working on that finger sucking—just in case your worried...). And they sat like that, close together, snuggling, reading books, having a great time and not fighting a bit, for well over an hour.

Two dollars well-spent.

(And I will gladly pay for therapy if they have issues later in life.)

Our kids need Harry Potter

Last weekend, we drove nine hours to go camping at Disney World. We drove nine hours back yesterday, and, for much of this time, poor Sam had to listen to me read articles about the Common Core on his iphone.

Finally, at one point, he looked at me and said, "You're finding a lot of articles criticizing the core. Perhaps you should find articles for the other side. To balance things out a little."

Well, I didn't look for these articles, because I've already read many of them, but what I did instead, was turn to the core itself. We read over the standards (I've done this many times already), and really, essentially, the standards say, "We want your child to be able to read something, comprehend it, make use of it in his brain, and retell that information to others in a clear, useful format."

The language is so garbled and full of jargon, it is difficult to wade your way through the mire, but truly, that's really all it says. Again and again and again.

Nothing wrong with that, right?

Right.

But is this idea new? School districts and states are scrambling to buy new curriculums, new software, new tests to meet these "new" standards. Because there must be a silver bullet, right? There has to be some program out there that will finally help us meet this new, elevated standards that are so good and new. There has to be a program out there that will teach our kids to read.

Let me pause in my sarcasm (sorry, I'm trying not to be cynical), to explain why I pulled my third grader out of school this year.

This is the year they began implementing the Common Core for language arts in our district. In the process, they bought two new programs: Daily CAFE, an organizational program to help the teachers organize reading time, and, The Daily Five.

I went to the third grade Open House. I watched my son's teacher roll her eyes about the new programs. I watched her explain that they didn't really understand how this was going to work, but they were going to do it anyway. I watched her list the steps in the writing process. Prewrite. Write. Rewrite. Peer Edit. Revise. Publish. As if there is a checklist writers of all types go through as we write. "Ah, let's see, prewriting done—check! Writing done—check! Now I will rewrite. Now I will share with my peers. Now I will revise. Now I will publish. Check!" I'm not even sure what the difference is between revising and rewriting. I've never distinguished between the two—and I never heard anyone do so during my two years in a master's program on writing. I listened to her use terms about the learning process I'm not convinced she understood herself because they were vague and a little meaningless.

Our district (and yours too, most likely) is rewriting the rules, rewriting the curriculum, rewriting teaching, rewriting our children's lives.

(Read this article for a great example of the impact this is having on our schools:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-tampio/do-we-need-a-common-core_b_1497854.html  )

I was concerned after this open house, so I paid close attention to Calvin. He came home from school very unhappy each day. He was irritable, and he is my never-irritable child. He didn't have enough time to read about animals, to go outside, he complained. He didn't have enough time to fill his mind with information, which is what Calvin loves to do. Because at school, they weren't filling his mind with information. They were doing Daily CAFE. They were doing The Daily Five. They were giving him the skills he needs to meet this demand:
"We want your child to be able to read something, comprehend it, make use of it in his brain, and retell that information to others in a clear, useful format."

In this search for the silver bullet to meet these new standards, we are forgetting a fundamental part of education. You don't read something, comprehend it, make use of it and then retell it just to do it. It's the information you gain in the process that is important. Reading is a tool. Writing is a tool. These things are used in order to acquire specific information, and, for school children, that information better be interesting and important.

Calvin wants to learn about science. He loves science. So why not give him science with a focus, with a purpose, and in the process fulfill those requirements for the Common Core? I'm not sure, but that's not what is happening.

My darling friend posted a comment on my last post. She told the story of how reading Harry Potter with her third grader turned him into a reader and raised his reading scores in just two months. He is trudging his way through those books not because he wants to become a great reader, but because he wants to find out what is going to happen. He is captivated.

Imagine if he'd only read the part where Harry fights Voldemort at the end because the reading program was trying to teach cause and effect? What if he only read the part where Harry goes to Diagon Alley for the first time because the reading program is trying to teach him how to use adjectives? Would he have fallen in love with Harry Potter if Harry's story were abbreviated, short-changed, stolen from him altogether? Harry Potter is above his level, but he is a boy pushing his way through a difficult reading snowstorm because the destination is so enticing, not because someone is telling him he'd better do it or his test scores will plummet.

In Saffy's Angel, by Hilary McKay, Indigo does not like to read. He's a poor reader until he develops an intense love for polar exploration. He forces himself to read adult books about polar exploration because they are all he can get on the subject, and he cannot quench his thirst. He uses dictionaries and encyclopedias to make sense of what he is reading. He rereads those books again and again until he understands every word, because he loves the subject. Not because he wants to be a great reader. Because he wants to be a polar explorer one day, and books are the best way for him to learn about it.

If your child is struggling with reading in any way, or even if they are supposedly on grade level—who knows what that really means—find them a book they can fall in love with. I promise you, that book exists. You may not think it does, but it does. There are books on every subject you can imagine, old and new. I will help you find them or there are other great blogs that recommend books. One of my favorite books on reading is this:


How to Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esme Codell. The lists in there are awesome. Her ideas are awesome.

It doesn't really matter if the Common Core is good or bad. But it does matter, very desperately, how it is implemented. Schools are taking books away from children in order to fulfill these demands. School libraries are struggling, librarians are being fired and replaced by aides who have no training, but computer programs and Ipads aimed at helping the kids master the core are being bought up indiscriminately.

My friend's son did not need his school district's amazing new reading textbook to improve his scores. He needed Harry Potter.