Readers: Made in Their Parents' Laps

As you well know if you've read this blog for any length of time, I'm a strong proponent of books, reading, libraries, and literacy. Since this is National Literacy Month (or so I've been told), I thought I would share a few thoughts on the topic from others and add my own two cents worth in today's post.

Reading must begin early.

First, I agree with what Emilie Buchwald wrote: "Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." I recall with fondness my mother reading stories and poems to us kids long before we learned how to read for ourselves. She also frequently recited from memory poems she had studied in school and sang songs from her own growing-up years.

If you want your children to grow up enjoying reading, read to them early and regularly. Read good, interesting stuff. And read it with expression. Make it exciting and memorable.

Second, Kate DeCamillo warned, "Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift."

When my brother and I were kids and fought with each other (as brothers often do), Mother punished us by sending us to the strawberry patch to pull weeds. I grew to hate gardening because of my mental associati0on of it with punishment. It will be the same with reading if it is used as a chore or--heaven forbid--a punishment.

Third, we must be careful to provide for our children material that is worth reading, not trash. It should be, as Philippians 4:8 says, things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy.

Reading learned early leads to greater learning.

Katherine Paterson said, "It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations. Something that will help them to make sense of their own lives...."

When I was growing up and learning to enjoy reading, books were neither the first nor the only things I read. My resources included the "funnies," or the comics page, and the baseball box scores of the Knoxville News-Sentinel at first. They also included comic books, the subject matter of which evolved over time. Then Archie comics led to Sgt. Rock, fictionalized history (maybe that's where my interest in military history started), then to the Illustrated Classics, which led to a broadening of my horizons through literature and reading the full versions of the featured books: A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.

I once taught under a principal who was a promoter of reading, "even if it's comic books." At the time, I disagreed with him, though not openly, thinking of comic books as trash, not worthy of the students' time. But in recalling the influences that led to my own avidness in reading, I now agree with his thesis. But that must be only the beginning; we shouldn't allow young people to remain stuck at that low level, but rather push them to higher levels and more worthwhile subject matter. As Art Spiegelman declared, "Comics are a gateway drug to literacy." They potentially can lead to better things.

Reading skills should advance to include many different subjects and on levels of progressively greater difficulty.

Fourth, reading a lot and widely also helps children grow their vocabulary, helps them understand the use of language, and provides examples for them to follow in their own writing. Katherine Paterson also said, "Read, because that's the way you learn how the language works."

"Read," Karen Witemeyer added, "everything you can get your hands on. Read until words become your friends. Then, when you need to find [specific words], they will jump into your mind, waving their hands for you to pick them."

As we begin learning to write, we tend to write like the authors we read most. Because I read a lot of works on economics, history, and political science during and after college, my writing tended to imitate those authors. Even after my writing matured during a career of teaching, researching, editing, and writing, a professor in a post-graduate course I was taking described my style to the other students as "Pauline," meaning that I tended to use a lot of complex sentence structures--like the epistles of the apostle Paul. That all is the result of what I read.

Finally, reading, taught well and practiced consistently, should open the door to a life-long exercise in learning. We'll never know it all, but we should keep on learning--by reading.

Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables, "To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark." Reading motivates learning, and that leads to even more reading. It's a never-ending, ever-growing cycle that leads, at some point, to one's own writing.

"Reading is like breathing in," Pane Allyn wrote, "and writing is like breathing out." We take in knowledge by reading, but we then feel compelled to share what we've learned. We must share it with others through writing.

I fear, however, for our educational system, which seems to be failing to produce good readers. Even many students who go on to college can't read well, and colleges have been forced to offer remedial reading classes, giving the non-readers and slow-readers a ray of hope to pass college-level classes. And many college classes focus mainly on project-based learning rather than extensive readings in the subjects being studied, probably because the enrollees can't handle such large amounts of text because they have not been properly taught reading skills.

There is much truth to the words of Mark Twain that I've quoted in earlier posts: "The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read."

The difference between the two people to whom Twain referred lies in the laps of the parents. That's where readers are made.