Category: Culture

I’ve been reading a lot of kids’ books these days–more than usual. Lately, I read kids’ books to my eight year old, and science books to my twelve year old. But for the last few weeks, I’ve been reading books assigned for a workshop on writing for children that I’m taking this weekend.

In our family, reading is big. In the time when other families watch TV, we read. My husband and I love reading our old favorites with our kids. We love reading aloud and still do even though both of them are readers on their own. We listen to books on tape in the car. We take stacks of books out of the library each week.

So I have been interested in the books they chose to have us discuss for the workshop. Obviously, they chose the books as good examples of books in each of the categories that children’s book publishers separate books into. The problem I have is, my kids simply don’t fit into those categories, and neither do many of the kids we know. When I read many books that are supposed to appeal to kids their age, I am simply perplexed.

A while back, I wrote about the problem of finding books for young gifted readers on the Write4Kids blog. With one exception, the books I read for the workshop highlight the problems we have in finding great literature for our kids.

The book they chose that represents an easy reader is Amelia Bedelia. Now, we’ve read a lot of Amelia Bedelia in our house–so much that I can recite parts of it from memory. But it was not a book our kids were interested in at the target age (5-7). That’s a book we read when they were preschoolers. My daughter has always enjoyed rereading her favorite picture books and early readers, so I’m sure she has pulled it off the shelf many times since then (certainly, she won’t let me give it away!), but it wasn’t appropriate for her age or reading level when it was supposed to be.

Amber Brown is not a Crayon is the book they chose to highlight the chapter book phase. Amber is in third grade. The book took me approximately fifteen minutes to read, and that was with plenty of distractions. When my son was in third grade, he wouldn’t even have glanced at this book–he didn’t waste his time on any book that short. My daughter just finished third grade and is working her way through Harry Potter. She might have been interested in this book in first grade, though its heavy emphasis on the school experience, use of sentence fragments and one-sentence paragraphs, and jargony kids’ speech would probably not have drawn her in.

Heart of a Shepherd was their Middle Grade (ages 8-12) choice. I actually enjoyed reading this book for a few reasons. One was that this book, set amongst devout Christians, most of them current or veteran members of the armed forces, living on ranch land in Eastern Oregon, seemed exotic to me. I enjoyed getting to know the characters, who were very lovingly and respectfully portrayed. The fact that the characters themselves didn’t agree on religious faith allowed me to feel that the book wasn’t preaching a specific religion at the reader.

However, I felt again that the book was aimed downward at children’s expected abilities rather than upward at inspiring them to more. Though the fleshed-out scenes were enjoyable and the plot compelling, all the meaning and depth were lost by a book that resembled a sketch more than a tapestry. I got my 12-year-old, in their target audience, to start it. But he never would finish after he dismissed it a few chapters in. There just wasn’t enough meat to it.

The only book that I thought was developed enough to engross my young readers was their choice for Young Adult fiction, Chains. My son did sail through it quickly, but he and I were able to have an interesting conversation afterwards about the Revolutionary War time and the life of slaves at that time. Also, we just happened to be traveling to New York when we read it, so it was fascinating to read the details of 18th century Manhattan. This is not, however, a book for younger children. Full of the agonizing details of the lives of slave children at this time, I’m not going to suggesting this one for our book club anytime soon.

So I find myself in a pretty typical situation: I am very willing to believe that these books represent what the wide center of the book-buying public actually wants. Publishers have made a science of finding that out. But as I turn back to what I consider my real mission in life, writing fiction, I find I have no interest in writing for this book-buying public. The books I loved as a child and the books that have hooked my kids in are very seldom the ones that follow publishing-industry rules. When they thought I should be reading Amber Brown, I was actually reading A Little Princess. When they thought I should be reading Heart of a Shepherd, I’d thrown in the towel on kids’ books and spent a summer reading War and Peace.

Now, the fact is, I didn’t really appreciate War and Peace as a young teen. I would have loved to read something more appropriate, but I’d literally gone through my public library from A to Z and read all the juvenile fiction they had to offer. There are many, many more kids’ books today, but my kids have zipped through stacks of them on their way to ‘Z.’ More books, same problem.

Now, of course, I know that the market for kids like mine is necessarily smaller than the market for “Hi-Lo” books (High Interest – Low Readability, a new category of books for reluctant readers).

But ‘success’ isn’t always what the mainstream defines it as. Sometimes success is fulfilling a need that most of the world doesn’t even notice. If I could write one book for kids like mine that reached other kids, I’d call that success. It may not get me on the bestseller list, but I’d like to watch a young, voracious reader curl up with a book I’d written, something that — for a few days — slows her trip to ‘Z.’

I’ve found myself citing something that hasn’t actually be scientifically validated, but yet I know it’s probably quite true. Unschoolers (homeschoolers who do not follow any academic curriculum in their households) say that even if you don’t “teach” your child anything throughout what would be the elementary school years, if he’s had a rich life full of hands-on learning and exploration, he can pretty much learn all the necessary K-6 curriculum in three months before he goes on to middle school.

There is a big caveat here: These kids aren’t sitting around and playing video games. Or maybe some of them are. But the most successful unschoolers are learning all the time. Here are some examples:

Kids in school learn measuring through curriculum in which they measure things in the classroom and do worksheets where they calculate the sum and difference of those measures.

Unschoolers work with a parent to build a birdhouse, doing all the measuring and calculation, with the parent’s help, to create something real that will be in their yard for the rest of their childhoods.

Kids in school read about and watch videos about the history of their state, and if their school and parents can afford it, they might go on a fieldtrip or two.

Unschoolers take off on roadtrips to places they’re interested in. They volunteer to work at historical parks. They make their own books about things they’ve learned.

Kids in school have “writing across the curriculum,” where writing skills are required in every discipline, even in ones where it doesn’t make all that much sense to the kids.

Unschoolers read, read, and read some more. If they aren’t comfortable writing but want to write a story or some ideas, they dictate them to a parent. But they are never forced to write something they don’t see the purpose of.

I want to point out first that we are not an unschooling family. Although I am gaining confidence that homeschooling is the best way for my kids to learn, I’m not that confident.

But I have a gut feeling that what they say about learning is true: Most of what is “taught” in elementary school is actually not necessary if you give kids a rich learning environment, and wait to give academics till they are really grounded in experiential learning in the real world. And this way of learning is actually healthier. All those kids who start to think of themselves as “stupid” in kindergarten because they can’t learn to read yet would have years of self-confidence. All those kids who learn to hate math because dry concepts have to be repeated over and over again would be able to experience the beauty and utility of math in the real world first.

I was talking to a friend about this and she pointed out a big hole in the idea that everyone could adopt this mode of learning: How about all those parents who can’t afford to stay home? How about all those single parents?

She’s right: I am not one of those homeschoolers who think that we can do away with the school system. However, one little part of me thinks that we could set aside our cynicism enough to improve our schools. Even that little part of me is not confident that this would happen, but it’s worth thinking about, in any case. I do believe that real change in the real world is almost always incremental, and giving up because your whole program isn’t going to pass Congress is silly.

So… What would our schools look like? First of all, our schools would accept that learning is a whole family activity. Families would not only be allowed into schools, but welcomed. (Do you know that many public schools now have “closed” campuses where even parents are not allowed to visit without prior registration?) Families would be included in the learning process, drawing on their culture, their skills, their enthusiasms to create a fuller school experience.

Our schools would accept that real, deep learning doesn’t happen without real, deep experience. And real, deep experience doesn’t happen without a bit of chaos and a lot of creativity. So our schools would be fully funded to offer the arts, music, sports, and everything else that draws people in.

Our schools would be full of reading: reading aloud every day (and not to grade how well the reader is reading aloud, but to share reading as a social activity), books in every room for kids to pick up whenever they want, adults talking about what they’re reading and why they love it.

Our schools would focus on project-oriented learning. My daughter, who is the closest to an unschooler in our family, learns most of what she learns through science projects. The science fair is a multi-curricular affair for her, with penmanship and math and history all bound up in the creative and investigative process. Kids would do projects that have a goal — a real goal, not just a grade. On a regular basis, their projects would yield a physical object for them to take home and use.

Finally, our schools would allow each individual to be an individual. There are kids who will go to school and who will want to study a topic, write an essay, and get a grade. There are kids who will want to learn algebra at the age of eight. There are kids who will want to take apart a car motor, then put it back together again.

Oh, I know, this is definitely a pie-in-the-sky vision. But with enough enthusiasm and energy, incremental change can happen. And really, how could things get worse? (Oh, yeah, see my last post…)