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The Importance of Choice
Feb. 19th, 2019 03:04 amFree choice instills a love of reading and learning. Force instills hatred. I agree with the author that it would be difficult to come up with a more effective way to make people loathe and avoid books.
I love reading. I will read the back of cereal boxes. But I hated reading in school because it was far below my level and almost all of it was very badly written. Now imagine that for all the kids who didn't go into school knowing that reading was awesome; they would conclude that it's always torture. Quite sensibly they cease doing it as soon as the force stops. That's the problem with force; you have to keep it up or people immediately bolt. And you can only force people to read while they're imprisoned in schools against their will.
I also designed and graded coursework for adult prison classes, where almost nobody can read. The skill caps out around fourth grade level. And yet I got a bunch of those guys absolutely hooked on reading -- by assigning them things by Langston Hughes and Lorna Dee Cervantes. Up until then, most of them had no idea that people like them could write things, or that anyone wrote about things they actually cared about. At least one or two per class would just catch fire with it. The others at least did the homework and learned something and had a not-terrible time exploring new things.
If you want people to learn stuff and enjoy reading, the only thing you have to do -- and the only thing that works -- is feed their interests. Give them books about characters who are like them, and ones who are different. Books about where they came from and where they ended up. If they love cars, give them car books. If they love flowers, give them field guides. There are books on everything under the sun and everything beyond it too. Books with pictures, with text, with pop-ups, with textures, with Braille. Something for everyone.
Don't waste it.
I love reading. I will read the back of cereal boxes. But I hated reading in school because it was far below my level and almost all of it was very badly written. Now imagine that for all the kids who didn't go into school knowing that reading was awesome; they would conclude that it's always torture. Quite sensibly they cease doing it as soon as the force stops. That's the problem with force; you have to keep it up or people immediately bolt. And you can only force people to read while they're imprisoned in schools against their will.
I also designed and graded coursework for adult prison classes, where almost nobody can read. The skill caps out around fourth grade level. And yet I got a bunch of those guys absolutely hooked on reading -- by assigning them things by Langston Hughes and Lorna Dee Cervantes. Up until then, most of them had no idea that people like them could write things, or that anyone wrote about things they actually cared about. At least one or two per class would just catch fire with it. The others at least did the homework and learned something and had a not-terrible time exploring new things.
If you want people to learn stuff and enjoy reading, the only thing you have to do -- and the only thing that works -- is feed their interests. Give them books about characters who are like them, and ones who are different. Books about where they came from and where they ended up. If they love cars, give them car books. If they love flowers, give them field guides. There are books on everything under the sun and everything beyond it too. Books with pictures, with text, with pop-ups, with textures, with Braille. Something for everyone.
Don't waste it.
