![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Common Core sparks war over words
Apparently the government is forcing English teachers to replace huge amounts of fiction with non-fiction. I had to comment:
Apparently the government is forcing English teachers to replace huge amounts of fiction with non-fiction. I had to comment:
What concerns me is that even most modern young-adult and children's fiction is, for lack of a better word, tripe. The old classics are routinely rewritten to simplfy and dumb down vocabulary and concepts. We are forcing our children to eat bland mush when they should be having a chance to try their literary and intellectual teeth on works of substance - and then we're surprised when they tell us that reading is boring.
It IS boring. But that's only because we're restricting them to books which have been sanitized and simplified into pablum. And those purile books must compete with the hyper-stimulating and omnipresent world of television and video games. What chance do our children have?
Since the day he was born, I've read my son REAL books. Alice In Wonderland (both books, and yes I know that's not the correct title). The Doctor Dolittle books - the original uncensored editions, mind you, not the painfully rewritten versions which are all that are being published today. The Wind in the Willows. The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings. Mister Penny. The Chronicles of Prydain. Bridge of Birds. The Black Stallion books. The original editions of Robert Arthur's Three Investigators books. The Portmanteau Book, The Teddy-Bear Habit, Edward Ardizonne's Tim series, The Jungle Books. Esther Averill's Jenny Linsky books. The Adventures of Phunsi. Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles. All of them with the original text and illustrations. Most of these are out of print, but you can find copies if you try - and it's worth it, it's so very much worth it. Great literature (and not-so-great but fun and challenging literature) is a gift beyond price for a child.
As for cost, many of these books can be obtained through your local library. Some of the best are in the public domain and can be freely downloaded from sites such as Project Gutenberg!
My son reads like mad on his own; his vocabulary and comprehension skills are excellent. And I continue to read to him every night. Next, we're going to tackle Rudyard Kipling's Kim.
It IS boring. But that's only because we're restricting them to books which have been sanitized and simplified into pablum. And those purile books must compete with the hyper-stimulating and omnipresent world of television and video games. What chance do our children have?
Since the day he was born, I've read my son REAL books. Alice In Wonderland (both books, and yes I know that's not the correct title). The Doctor Dolittle books - the original uncensored editions, mind you, not the painfully rewritten versions which are all that are being published today. The Wind in the Willows. The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings. Mister Penny. The Chronicles of Prydain. Bridge of Birds. The Black Stallion books. The original editions of Robert Arthur's Three Investigators books. The Portmanteau Book, The Teddy-Bear Habit, Edward Ardizonne's Tim series, The Jungle Books. Esther Averill's Jenny Linsky books. The Adventures of Phunsi. Robert A. Heinlein's juveniles. All of them with the original text and illustrations. Most of these are out of print, but you can find copies if you try - and it's worth it, it's so very much worth it. Great literature (and not-so-great but fun and challenging literature) is a gift beyond price for a child.
As for cost, many of these books can be obtained through your local library. Some of the best are in the public domain and can be freely downloaded from sites such as Project Gutenberg!
My son reads like mad on his own; his vocabulary and comprehension skills are excellent. And I continue to read to him every night. Next, we're going to tackle Rudyard Kipling's Kim.
