Reading to children

The word gap in early childhood is important. A child with a Mom who reads to her may hear a million more words than one who doesn't have that advantage.  I have many happy memories of Mom reading to my brother and me in the big burgundy late 40s chair with arms large enough to hold two children of school age (the chair, not hers). I can probably even remember the books. We didn't know what an advantage she was giving us even though we lived in a rural town of 1,000 with all 12 grades in one building. No amount of DEI later in life or Head Start as toddlers can surpass a mother who reads to her children. I remember the Little Engine that Could, the Ugly Duckling, and the Wee wee Mannie and the big big Coo to this day. Those stories had an ideology and lessons, great illustrations and challenging vocabulary plus Mom did great accents.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404074947.htm?

The struggle--never ending

  

In summer we spend a lot of time reading books on our porch, 

then a short walk to the kitchen for a snack.

 

Joan doesn’t agree with today’s philosophy of reading—guest blogger Joan Turrentine (former teacher)

“Recent educational philosophy has been that it doesn't matter WHAT children read as long as they DO read. I am glad I grew up and went to school in a day when schools believed that it matters WHAT students read. My mind and memory are full of quality literature, classic poetry, thought-provoking stories and poems. I became familiar with and developed a useful and precise vocabulary and a familiarity with proper English language syntax. I observed in countless realistic situations (in reading assignments) how real people act and how people interact with other people and build happy and successful lives. I read the thoughts of some of the greatest thinkers of the past and learned how they organize their thoughts, thereby learning HOW to think and reason. Because of this background, I often read FB posts, have conversations, or read other media and recognize cultural references, recognize faulty/logical reasoning strategies, understand some of human nature.

I feel bad for many of today's elementary school kids who only read about teachers who are aliens, students who are wizards, and other such imaginary life situations. What preparation for real life does that provide? What thought processes does that develop? How does that help them discover their own values in life? And then in post-elementary school they read such dystopian literature as the Hunger Games series, the Unwind series, or numerous other books with unrealistic settings which provide no opportunity for observing how people might handle real life situations and what consequences might be expected to result from actions. There's nothing wrong with any of this literature if students want to read them on their own; but I believe the schools owe them better than that. These students won't be culturally literate as adults - recognizing references to the classic literature, philosophy, or history of the ages. They won't have had the opportunity to develop their own sense of how to live successfully in this world. What they have read will not have helped them develop values to help them live successfully and happily. I so strongly believe that it DOES matter WHAT children read.”

I  agree with Joan’s concern and philosophy, I just don't think I had all that much "quality" reading material--at least my mother used to complain it wasn't as good as what she had in the 1920's.  All I cared about as a child was horse and dog stories. I enjoyed reading from encyclopedias and preferred to write and illustrate my own stories. My grandmother gave us subscriptions to Jack and Jill, hardly sophisticated or difficult information.  We had a lot of magazines and the local newspapers (and maybe one from Chicago). Mom belonged to the “Book of the Month” club, which was definitely considered “low brow,” but I enjoyed looking through her fiction.  I learned the names of the classics, by playing the card game "Authors" , and by high school, the literature text books were just excerpts grouped by era or genre. In college I was a foreign language major, so I had NO American or British literature. I was definitely a forerunner for today's poorly educated students!  Today I belong to a book club, and I’m grateful for my well educated reading friends—but I’m still not educated in the type of literature Joan recommends. And of course, not having grandchildren (she has many), I haven’t even heard of the series she writes about.

Reading to children

 

Sounds wonderful, but as a mother who read to her children every day, and who took them to the library, and bought them books, I don't believe this. It's good cuddle time, it's enjoyable for parent and child, but not every child enjoys book reading.

“The commission spent two years poring through thousands of research projects conducted in the previous quarter century, and in 1985 issued its report, Becoming a Nation of Readers. Among its primary findings, two simple declarations rang loud and clear:

“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.”1 “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.”2 The commission found conclusive evidence to support reading aloud not only in the home but also in the classroom.

In their wording—“ the single most important activity”—the experts were saying reading aloud was more important than work sheets, homework, book reports, and flash cards. One of the cheapest, simplest, and oldest tools of teaching was being promoted as a better tool than anything else in the home or classroom— and it’s so simple you don’t even need a high school diploma in order to do it.”

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
(Penguin, 2013, 7th edition).

Talk and read to your children

I wonder sometimes how my mother got so smart--many happy memories of her reading to my brother and me while the three of us cuddled in a large overstuffed chair. Actually it was one of those huge 1940s era upholstered chairs with wide arms, so I was sitting on the arm.  As a child, I often wished Mom would stop talking--she believed in reasoning with children rather than spanking.  Occasionally I thought a spanking would be better than a long explanation of my mischief and misbehavior.

Building a young child's vocabulary is essential for future success. To keep me quiet, Mom would make up stories while braiding my hair and she would talk so softly I'd have to listen. And music. Our home was filled with it--usually our piano lessons, but sometimes just for fun. Only one of us was good enough to earn a living at it.  And we four children with the oldest playing the piano presented programs with our off key quartet to local groups and clubs. It was my little brother who stole the show since he was so cute. Even though our church uses huge screens with words of hymns, I always pull out the hymnal if available and practice sight reading the music. Screens in churches have killed what little knowledge many had of music.

And most critical--I had a hard working father who was home every night. He didn't play with us, or tuck us in at night. He didn't hug or kid around. Most of my friends (especially boy friends) were afraid of him. But we saw how he treated our mother and his mother. Like they were the most important persons in his life--and they were.

How did our parents get so wise without academic research?

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/parent-involvement-in-early-literacy-erika-burton?

https://lifehacker.com/eight-ways-to-help-improve-your-childs-vocabulary-1645796717

http://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/style/the-role-of-fathers-with-daughters-and-sons/

Advantages of books over the internet

 
I read a lot--but more and more it's on a screen, which encourages skipping, wandering off to another topic, and the flicker is bad for the eye sight.  I'm trying to read a difficult book and keep putting it down.  Then I came across an old blog that suggested 15 minutes a day of doing anything can help develop a habit.  So I'm setting the timer and sitting down to read this book--away from the computer.

 

Health Benefits of Reading

The gender gap in reading

Yes, there's a gender gap--in reading. And it is world wide, highest in Finland despite the praise for its school system. Not to worry though. It goes away in adulthood. Let’s hope we don’t spend too much tax money trying to fix it.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/03/26-chalkboard-gender-gap-loveless

The gender gap is large, worldwide, and persistent through the K-12 years. What should be done about it? Maybe nothing. As just noted, the gap seems to dissipate by adulthood. Moreover, crafting an effective remedy for the gender gap is made more difficult because we don’t definitely know its cause. Enjoyment of reading is a good example. Many commentators argue that schools should make a concerted effort to get boys to enjoy reading more. Enjoyment of reading is statistically correlated with reading performance, and the hope is that making reading more enjoyable would get boys to read more, thereby raising reading skills.

What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House by Tevi Troy

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15824285-what-jefferson-read-ike-watched-and-obama-tweeted

I was at Half-Price Books today and noticed this title on the Clearance shelf for $2.00.  I almost selected it because I like to read about readers. I looked at the chapter on President G.W. Bush, and was surprised to see the author got it right, whereas Bush detractors (most of the media) were totally off base.  Bush was an avid reader—he and Rove used to have competitions. 

Laura Bush’s recommendations

“Mr. Bush was more of a reader than many Americans imagined — he had reading contests with Karl Rove, his top political adviser, measured not just by the number of books finished, but the cumulative number of pages and even square inches of text. He was particularly drawn to Lincoln, reading 14 books about the Civil War president while in office.

His reading at times had impact. Natan Sharansky’s book “The Case for Democracy” helped inform Mr. Bush’s second-term focus on spreading freedom around the world.

And Alistair Horne’s history of the war in Algeria, “A Savage War of Peace,” taught Mr. Bush that more people died after the French withdrew — reinforcing his own reluctance to pull out of Iraq.

“Obama’s book selections have been harder to read,” said Mr. Troy, the author of “What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted.”  Obama’s book list

President GHW Bush’s summer list

Bush’s last year and WaPo finds out he reads

Suggested reading, GW Bush

Children in poverty

Guess what determines poverty for children? You know what I'm going to say. Marriage--or the lack of it. Look at this chart. Poverty rates for children of married couples is the flat line at the bottom; essentially it hasn't changed for whites in 35 years and has decreased for blacks. Also it is almost the same for married black couples and married white couples--2 lines meet in 2000 and 2008. If you eyeball the chart and figure out where 2009 is, you'll see poverty among children has increased in all groups with Obama in charge of the economy. (Recession ended in 2009) http://childstats.gov/americaschildren/eco1a.asp

 

 

The latest buzz words from the President are "word gap." That was the subject of the June 24 presidential message. In short, parents need to talk to their children because poor and low income children hear half as many words as the children of better educated parents who are earning more. And the federal government is giving a boost to none other than Hillary Clinton in the public-private partnership called Too small to Fail. The partner is the Bill Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Reading to children is a super idea--but the parent also needs to enjoy reading (not just know how), spending time with the child, and has to turn off the phone and TV as a start. If you read the lyrics of popular songs, that probably won't improve vocabulary (singing is another suggestion to close the "word gap"). http://toosmall.org/

Dad--you can read the sports section of any newspaper to your child (they don't really care if they know you are interested in it).  It has the highest grade level of words.  Also lots of idioms and pictures and good writing. This is not in the research--it's my advice. One day in the coffee shop I saw a dad reading to his infant and I think it was Dickens. The child never took his eyes off dad's face.

Summer reading for teens

Last night my neighbor asked me about summer selections for reading for her 15 year old grandson. He has a school suggested list with 2 books required. I have no experience in what teens read, but I was surprised by the list. Seemed awfully mature (and depressing). One was Killer Angels, an historical novel about the Civil War and is used in military schools; another was The Help, about black women who worked as household help in the South of the early 60s, but the narrator is white. The last runaway--an English woman and the underground railroad—which my book club read this year. I read a lot as a teen--mostly historical fiction, but probably not what adults suggested.

So I checked the Internet for summer reading lists. Although there were a few classics, many I found disturbing. Like the one about a boy who lives in a homeless shelter with his spaced out mother because dad is in prison; a 5 year old growing up in 1 room because his mother has been held prisoner for 7 years (like the Cleveland story); Devil in the White City (scariest book I've ever read). But then, Les Miserables and Uncle Tom's Cabin (also on the list) aren't a walk in the park

What are your children/grandchildren reading this summer?

Friday family photo

This was her after breakfast nap. The click on the phone awoke her, so she shifted positions to her before lunch nap. She got up long enough to investigate what I was fixing for lunch, and now she's in her after lunch curl position. She wasn't really reading the book; but you probably knew that. She prefers fiction. She's a calico, a rescue from Cat Welfare in Columbus. Her name, however, is from a horse catalog. Horses have much nicer names than cats.

Whatever happened to the presidential book race?

When it came out in 2008 that President George W. Bush was an avid reader--about 100 books a year, non-fiction--the left, particularly librarians, were incredulous, critical of the selections, or used the word "allegedly" when reporting it. Then about two years later it was revealed that Obama was more into fiction, and read very little--maybe 10 books a year. Then they just made excuses. This past summer it was explained as "escapist fiction" for his vacation and books for his daughters. Well, maybe there will be something for the ALA Banned Books Week, because I'm sure there's a good reason Obama doesn't read and George Bush does.

Now I feel better--I'm not the only one who doesn't finish books

"The older I get, the fewer books I finish, and the more I read highly selectively — fast forward set on high. This is either the getting of wisdom — or the gradual shutting down of (what to call it?) one’s social and engagement functions as one gets closer to in-turnedness of dying, the inability of the aging to take in new stuff because we are too occupied trying to process the accumulation of the previous decades."

Kenneth Anderson The ethics of not finishing but still criticizing books

Slow Reading

Now I can feel good about it. Slow Reading by John Miedema. You'll feel better about all the time you wasted in speed reading classes.

Counting on igorance

Dan Kennedy in Dumb and Dumber by Choice begins by pointing out that reading is down 20% in the last 25 years and that 40 million Americans don't read, can't read or won't read, and that most of the people who voted for Obama didn't read his books in which he outlined his socialist beliefs and anti-American plans. Nor does Congress read it's own legislation before it votes.

"This past week, some clowns in Congress proposed a tax credit of up to $3,500 a year for pet owners. It was reported as something amusing by the media. But is it funny – or frightening? Doesn’t it speak to the confidence our Royalty in Washington has about the ignorance and stupidity of the peons they rule? As does Obama’s proposed $250.00 bribe to seniors, the asinine contention that they will magically take $500-billion from Medicare without cutting the benefits it delivers, the even more asinine assertion that the near trillion dollar costs of the new socialized medicine plan will be offset by savings from stopping fraud and waste in the already existent, smaller socialized health care plan. These are all the very same kind of insults to intelligence.

All these insults display the same run-amok arrogance. The same power mad abuse of authority. The same contempt for you and me. They have decided that more than enough of us are ignorant idiots, easily pacified with empty promises and a piece of candy, happy to be done with all responsibility to think, busied with funny videos on YouTube and 146-character Tweets and X-Box and ordering complicated drinks at Starbucks. They know that five times as many people watch the climactic episodes of “American Idol” than watch TV news programs, let alone read a newspaper and news magazines. They know that more people participate in fantasy football leagues on one Sunday than watch “Meet the Press” in a year of Sundays. They are certain of – and rely on – the growing ignorance of the American public."

The Effort Diet

Seth says that effort is more important than luck, and suggests you try his diet

. . . here's a bootstrapper's/marketer's/entrepreneur's/fast-rising executive's effort diet. Go through the list and decide whether or not it's worth it. Or make up your own diet. Effort is a choice, at least make it on purpose:

1. Delete 120 minutes a day of 'spare time' from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.

2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
1. Exercise for thirty minutes.
   
2. Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
   
3. Send three thank you notes.
   
4. Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
   
5. Volunteer.
   
6. Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
   
7. Give a speech once a month about something you don't currently know a lot about.

3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.

4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.

If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don't, you'd have a wider network and you'd be more focused.

It's entirely possible that this won't be sufficient, and you will continue to need better luck. But it's a lot more likely you'll get lucky, I bet.

Learning to read

Everyone learns differently, and if you're lucky, when you were learning to read you had phonics. Some people have a good eye and a tin ear. Others an outstanding memory. Some will never enjoy reading no matter what method is used--it will be only utilitarian. Theories of reading have been changing for 200 years. Since I had both Dick and Jane (see and say, or repeat the words until you know them) and phonics exercises (my first grade teacher recently died at about 103 and she was a killer for phonics, punctuation and spelling), I had a good blend. Here's Jeanne Chall's summary from Learning to read (1967, rev. 1983) as reported by Dr. Diane Ravitch.

Chall said that there are two primary approaches to teaching reading: one stresses the importance of breaking the code of language; and the other stresses the meaning of language. Phonics programs had a code emphasis, and look-say programs had a meaning emphasis. The research, Chall said, unequivocally supported the use of a code emphasis for beginning readers—and she stressed “beginning readers.”

She found that the first step in learning to read in one’s native language is essentially learning a printed code for the speech we possess. The code emphasis was especially important for children of lower socioeconomic status, she said, because they were not likely to live in homes surrounded with books or with adults who could help them learn to read. Knowing the names of the letters and the sounds of the letters before learning to read, Chall said, helps children in the beginning stages regardless of which method is used. She concluded that for a beginning reader, knowledge of letters and sounds had even more influence on their reading achievement than the child’s tested IQ did.

Her report was followed by an even more interesting one about the differences in achievement of black students living and attending public school in Fairfax County (wealthy DC suburb) and those in Richmond, VA. In Richmond schools that were 99% black were outperforming the black students in schools that were 99% white. Apparently the Richmond administration had decided to stop blaming poverty and the parents for the students' poor showing and decided it was their job to teach, and to use the best methods to do that (there's not a lengthy discussion of phonics, but it was included).

Read the entire discussion here.

The week I couldn't read

Finnish is a daunting language. In Finland, you're better off to try Swedish, their second language--at least it might sound like something you'll recognize. Here's what I wrote two years ago this July on not being able to read--I was so desperate I bought Time Magazine:

I paid 4 euros (about $5.00) for 52 pages of Time, 19 of which were photos of the World Cup. Photos I can figure out in Finnish. Five pages were devoted to bashing the "Bush Doctrine." No mention or credit for liberating the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator; no credit for identifying North Korea within months of taking office as part of the Axis of Evil; no mention that his neo-con advisors are former Democrats; or the 500 WMD that have been found; that the Iraqi people have voted in free elections. Although Bush has always acknowledged we were in for a long battle against Islamic terrorists, when he reiterates this, the MSM seems to think it is a victory for their side.

So what does Time recommend? Some Truman era reruns. They don't mention how extremely unpopular Truman was his second term--I think he was lower in the polls than Bush. Another article by Jos. S. Nye, Jr. pined nostalgically for the days of FDR and containment. Tell that one to the Estonians and the millions of other east Europeans who died in the Gulags waiting for the Americans to come and free them. Sixty years ago we sold out 40 million East Europeans to the USSR; let's not repeat that mistake by selling out the Iraqis.

Even so, it was good to be able to read again.

I know just how he feels

This blogger was writing about comments that go off-topic here,

"That actually validates my thesis. When you read my blog, you read what you want to read, or what you think I ought to have written, rather than what I actually said"

but what blogger hasn't experienced the same results regardless of the topic (his is "sacramental magisterial authority" and I have no idea what that is).

Scrolling down to his bio, I read

I've been blogging for a long time. Since any other detail I could put in my profile would either offend somebody or be used as a launch-pad for personal insults, that's all you get to know.

I should have thought of that. Too late now.