In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, school superintendent Thomas Gradgrind praises a boy named Bitzer for defining a horse as a “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.”
This collection of “facts” would not help anyone who had never seen a horse before, and it would probably confuse a few who had, but Thomas Gradgrind is too intent on filling “the little pitchers before him” with facts to notice. His model of education is completely fact-based, with no room for interpretation, nuance, or imagination. Students excel by memorizing lists of facts and definitions that they do not necessarily understand, and although these feats may impress pedants like Gradgrind, they provide little in the way of practical utility.
Bitzer’s definition assumes that one knows the meanings of “quadruped,” graminivorous,” “grinders,” “eye-teeth,” and “incisive,” but its listing of three kinds of teeth--grinders, eye-teeth, and incisive--provides a level of detail that can only be interesting to budding veterinary students while also failing to provide a visual image of a horse that might differentiate it from other herbivores. I’d like to propose that many of today’s students perceive their education as similarly disjointed sets of information, both too detailed and utterly uninteresting.
K-12 education’s focus on skills-based learning often resembles Bitzer’s definition of a horse because it shuts down children’s curiosity and turns reading into a dreary experience in which they must identify parts of the text or answer questions that require them to use their skills to the exclusion of all else. Many of my tutoring students tell me that they are “getting ready” to read a book in school by completing a packet about the book and author first. Now, I agree that it’s often helpful to know something about an author’s life and times when starting a new book. However, I can’t help noticing how such a slow rollout diminishes the fun of reading a book for the first time.
So, how do we put the fun back in reading? Well, we can take the summer off from quizzing our children or making sure they learn every vocabulary word they encounter. Instead, focus on quantity over perfect understanding because reading should be a daily activity and summer reading should be fun. It doesn’t matter if children can remember plot details or identify themes as long as they are reading.
Reading teaches on its own, without adult intervention or guidance, as long as a child is encouraged to read, read more, and then read more again.
Elizabeth Breau, Ph.D. (she/her), is an award-winning writing coach and private English tutor. Her book, History According to SAT: A Content Guide to SAT Reading and Writing, won a silver medal in the teen category from the Nonfiction Authors Association. You can reach her at historyaccordingtosat.com.
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