Why do we read? What does reading do for our students, our children, our own lives? What are the advantages of having a library and librarians?
I loved this article by Neil Gaiman: he brings up so many ideas that I think we need to be communicating to our students, our parents, our whole world in general.
Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading, and Daydreaming
Would you please read this and let us all know what you think? Maybe give us the part you love, hate, or are planning to put on the wall of your library in vinyl? Or tell me I'm just up in the night. Whatever that particular phase means.
Mine would be,
"We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different."
But ask me again, tomorrow. It will probably be different.
Be well.
Well, you couldn't get a better endorsement for libraries, librarians, encouraging reading for children, could you? I first read his books The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I swapped my Dad for 2 Goldfish. I thought he was delightful in that British understated way. Then I read The Graveyard, and I loved it! I liked when he said to stop putting down the word 'escapism' He embraces imagination and I agree, escaping and going to imagination is what keeps us moving forward!
ReplyDeleteNeil gave this example. "The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure." Or may I say "wouldn't"read for pleasure. That hit me where I live, or work. I need to work harder. How can I show these kids the pleasure of reading?
ReplyDeleteIsn't that statistic amazing? It boggles the mind that we don't, I don't know, DO something with that info?
DeleteNeil gave this example. "The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure." Or may I say "wouldn't"read for pleasure. That hit me where I live, or work. I need to work harder. How can I show these kids the pleasure of reading?
ReplyDeleteWhen Neil explains that when you are reading "you get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed." This reminded me of what Shannon Hall said last year at UELMA when she was talking about gender bias in books and said that if boys don't read novels with girl characters, how will they understand how girls think and feel? And that they best way to begin to understand and to empathize with someone is to read about them. That is one reason why reading is so important not just for children, but for adults as well.
ReplyDeleteI thought about that presentation, too. I wonder if we make things to compartmentalized: girl toys, boy toys...books allow us to cross that line and see how other people feel. I know my teaching was rocked to the core after I read White Oleander. I had a new perspective for my foster and group home kids. I knew their lives were different than mine on an intellectual level, but that book helped me to really feel what was different.
ReplyDeleteHe makes so many great points. I realize that I have a fiction addiction and that is largely how I learn and cope. Books give me the De-stressing that I need and allow me to be inspired and curious.
ReplyDeleteI loved the quote " discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different." We can all do that and even if we are only a grain in the sand, if we each improve small things, then society benefits in big ways. Literacy is crucial to life-long learning and I will go so far as to add personal success and accomplishment. We want our children to succeed and have a bright and interesting future as learners but also readers.
The other thing was the empathy. I see a lot of terrible behavior in some of my classes and kiddos wouldn't act that way if they could feel for the other person. Sometimes I think that our tech is cold and teaching kiddos to be even less personal and caring. Books flips that on it's head and helps them think outside themselves.
Gaiman underlines some really important points. As I read the article, I kept thinking of that phrase "reading for pleasure" and then of that other phrase which we see all over the place in educational circles "reading for a variety of purposes." Our biggest challenge and overarching goal, seems to be teaching children to access the written word for the love of it, for the joy, the escapism the world/life experience which reading offers. Yet, I am almost afraid to say that school isn't the place for that. It should have happened at home.
ReplyDeleteMethinks we need a massive hook, a device or strategy to make that happen, (and hopefully it is something stupidly simple).
After all, how do you introduce a child to something in a way that will make them love it? Don't they first have to see us doing it, loving it? Don't they then have to participate in the activity with us, to share our joy? I don't know if our educational systems, programs or curriculums are set up to facilitate that, truly.
Rose Cain
Glendale