Reading à la Bush
By Patrick Bens
If reading to a child helps it with learning more vocabulary earlier, as Laura Bush maintains in an NPR interview of 08.02.01 -- and I don’t disagree with that statement at all -- then little Dubya did not get read to or often enough. His vocabulary and reading skills are minimal. His articulation and pronunciation are abominable.
In the former Bush administration, first lady Barbara Bush took it upon herself to help stamp out illiteracy. The current first Lady, Laura Bush, aims at eradicating a-literacy. How?
Reading to children is a beautiful ritual. Reading, per se, is an intelligent habit. To pick up this marvelous habit from a parent, the child has to first see, hear and feel a parent reading. It’s not enough to sit a child down on your lap and read her a story. This can be to a toddler as passive as watching videos. If immediately afterwards you go back to watch the sports networks or clean your gun, the child will feel as if she has been duped away from her TV viewing or, worse, her toys.
From my own experiences, I discovered that the best way to have one child or an entire class reap the benefits of a good reading is to read a lot yourself. Observe the reaction of a small child while you are reading peacefully. Your being absorbed in intense reading will initiate curiosity in your child. If you genuinely enjoy reading to yourself, the child feels that enjoyment. If you burst out in laughter once in a while, the child will come running to crawl into your lap to share in the joy. That’s the time to open a book of children’s stories.
When the children's story has ended, it’s playtime again. Casually, you return to your own reading, allowing the child time to explore her imagination, based on the story she just experienced. With her toys and various objects she's allowed to touch, your child gradually learns to recreate parts of the story, eventually from beginning to end and through these experiments, she starts learning the fundamentals of reasoning. Children who play creatively respect the cooperative efforts of others. They reach out to their peers and try to communicate, eager to share knowledge.
During the interview, Laura Bush was asked to read a few paragraphs from one of her favorite literary works. The title of the novel and the name of the author were unknown to me and therefore escaped me. I do however remember specifically that the passage she read on the air was cobwebbed with spiritual remarks and in reference to a biblical anecdote. If, by her preference of faith-based literature, the first lady hinted that she regards the bible as the best material for children, I have another experience to draw on.
From observing religious tenants on numerous occasions, I came away with the following sad impression: Reading from the bible as a preconditioned ritual -- like attending mass -- can ruin in any child the desire for learning. The concentration of the child ceases soon after the last word is uttered, if not long before. Boredom replaces curiosity. Fear replaces joy. All Bible stories are too dogmatic to allow freedom of expression in consequent plays or games. This leads to an early apprenticeship of frustration and insecurity. Bible reading has no creative motive. It is hopelessly removed from reality and the environment. Children who grow up being subjected to repeated bible recitations lose the chance to develop their own unlimited world of make-believe, where a chair becomes a throne and a table is a castle. They can never enjoy the magical values of paper bags being helmets, cardboard boxes being ships and a blanket being the ocean wide.
Theists are pushing reading beyond the limit. They are forcing it down to the youngest children, forsaking their playtime schedule. Now they are even reading from the bible to fetuses because indoctrination starts at conception.
Reading to children is not the destination. It’s the train on which we put our child in the driver’s seat. The fantasies the child is allowed to sculpt, the vocabulary she subconsciously absorbs, and the initiatives she is motivated to represent the luggage she will take into the future.
If First Lady Laura Bush sincerely wishes the nation to read to its children, it will be necessary to first teach parents to disqualify the bible as literature for juveniles. The à la Bush bible recitation stifles freedom of expression, leaving children thinking that reading is a religious chore, instead of a universally enjoyed communicative pleasure that has bullet-trained great kids into great scientists.
By Patrick Bens
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In the former Bush administration, first lady Barbara Bush took it upon herself to help stamp out illiteracy. The current first Lady, Laura Bush, aims at eradicating a-literacy. How?
Reading to children is a beautiful ritual. Reading, per se, is an intelligent habit. To pick up this marvelous habit from a parent, the child has to first see, hear and feel a parent reading. It’s not enough to sit a child down on your lap and read her a story. This can be to a toddler as passive as watching videos. If immediately afterwards you go back to watch the sports networks or clean your gun, the child will feel as if she has been duped away from her TV viewing or, worse, her toys.
From my own experiences, I discovered that the best way to have one child or an entire class reap the benefits of a good reading is to read a lot yourself. Observe the reaction of a small child while you are reading peacefully. Your being absorbed in intense reading will initiate curiosity in your child. If you genuinely enjoy reading to yourself, the child feels that enjoyment. If you burst out in laughter once in a while, the child will come running to crawl into your lap to share in the joy. That’s the time to open a book of children’s stories.
When the children's story has ended, it’s playtime again. Casually, you return to your own reading, allowing the child time to explore her imagination, based on the story she just experienced. With her toys and various objects she's allowed to touch, your child gradually learns to recreate parts of the story, eventually from beginning to end and through these experiments, she starts learning the fundamentals of reasoning. Children who play creatively respect the cooperative efforts of others. They reach out to their peers and try to communicate, eager to share knowledge.
During the interview, Laura Bush was asked to read a few paragraphs from one of her favorite literary works. The title of the novel and the name of the author were unknown to me and therefore escaped me. I do however remember specifically that the passage she read on the air was cobwebbed with spiritual remarks and in reference to a biblical anecdote. If, by her preference of faith-based literature, the first lady hinted that she regards the bible as the best material for children, I have another experience to draw on.
From observing religious tenants on numerous occasions, I came away with the following sad impression: Reading from the bible as a preconditioned ritual -- like attending mass -- can ruin in any child the desire for learning. The concentration of the child ceases soon after the last word is uttered, if not long before. Boredom replaces curiosity. Fear replaces joy. All Bible stories are too dogmatic to allow freedom of expression in consequent plays or games. This leads to an early apprenticeship of frustration and insecurity. Bible reading has no creative motive. It is hopelessly removed from reality and the environment. Children who grow up being subjected to repeated bible recitations lose the chance to develop their own unlimited world of make-believe, where a chair becomes a throne and a table is a castle. They can never enjoy the magical values of paper bags being helmets, cardboard boxes being ships and a blanket being the ocean wide.
Theists are pushing reading beyond the limit. They are forcing it down to the youngest children, forsaking their playtime schedule. Now they are even reading from the bible to fetuses because indoctrination starts at conception.
Reading to children is not the destination. It’s the train on which we put our child in the driver’s seat. The fantasies the child is allowed to sculpt, the vocabulary she subconsciously absorbs, and the initiatives she is motivated to represent the luggage she will take into the future.
If First Lady Laura Bush sincerely wishes the nation to read to its children, it will be necessary to first teach parents to disqualify the bible as literature for juveniles. The à la Bush bible recitation stifles freedom of expression, leaving children thinking that reading is a religious chore, instead of a universally enjoyed communicative pleasure that has bullet-trained great kids into great scientists.
May 31, 2002