based on a true story
I donāt think Fortnite is to blame for kids nowadays not readingā¦
Thatās the joke. Itās the authoritarian overbearing parent.
He was being sarcastic lol
Reminded me of these
That violin one hit close to home.
I remember doing homework once, asked my grandmother if she was proud of me. āDo some thing for me to be proud of.ā That hurt.
That comic up there ā I witnessed almost that exact scenario. Teacher wanted the kids to all pick books. One kid spots something on the shelf and gets visibly excited. Pulls it out and starts reading. Teacher sees it, snatches it off him and tells him that this is a book for 8 year olds (the kid was 15ish) and tells him to get a book more appropriate for his age. Kid slouches around the shelves for about 10 minutes, finally picks up a book at random and sits in his chair tucking the edges of each page into the binding to make that looped-page look. He didnāt read a word. He sat there and did this to his book for the remainder of the reading session:
He had been genuinely excited about the 8 year old book heād picked up. It was a new one in a series he used to read as a younger kid. Heād been actively sitting and reading, and then he was embarrassed in front of his classmates, told off for reading a kids book, and voila. He lost all enthusiasm for reading anything else that day.
Whatās worse? That kid had been hit by a car like a year and a half earlier. Severe brain trauma. Had to re-learn a lot of basic things, like how to speak and how to read.
An 8 year old book would have been perfect for him. Easy enough to read that it would have helped rebuild his confidence in his own reading ability. A book meant for 15/16 years olds? A lot harder to read than a book for 8 year olds. Especially if youāre recovering from a relatively recent brain injury.
And yeah, the teacher knew all about his brain injury, and the recovery. He just seemed go be of the opinion that the kid was 15, so he should be reading books for 15 year olds, irrespective of brain injury.
Reading this thread Iām reminded of Daniel Pennaeās The Rights of the Reader, which can be found in a lot of bookshops and school libraries:Ā
The child speaking at the bottom in Quentin Blakeās distinctive spiky handwriting is sayingĀ ā10 rights, 1 warning: Donāt make fun of people who donāt read - or they never willā
OKAY LISTEN
This thread is fucking depressing so I wanted to add an example of what can happen when the RIGHT approach is taken.
My best friend is a school librarian. But for a few years, she taught 7th and 8th grade. This was right around 2010.
She assigned a book report. You could do any book you wanted, but she had to approve your choice.
Some girl chose Twilight.
Alicia called me and said āI donāt know what to do. Her other teachers said it was a miracle she picked a book at all. She wonāt even read two paragraphs for homework. Butā¦itās TWILIGHT.ā Which, yes, Alicia had read, because it was popular with her students and she felt like she had to keep abreast of their likes and dislikes to be effective. (For those who werenāt around for this, or donāt remember: a lot of schools and teachers were banning Twilight more or less on the basis of finding it trashy.)
I said: ātell her yes. But tell her that if she wants to read Twilight, there are some questions you want her to keep in mind while she reads.ā And advised her to tailor those questions around things that bothered her about the books (for example, Edwardās stalking of Bella).
She did.
A few weeks later she called me again.
The girl decided to read the whole series, got halfway through Breaking Dawn, took her the book, and said āMrs. [name], I just donāt LIKE any of these people.ā Normally, Alicia wouldāve recommended Harry Potter, but again: these were the only books the girl had been known to pick up in YEARS, and the final Potter book was just barely three years old. If sheād wanted to read it, she already would have. Aliciaās preferred genre is one I call Tudor-lite (Jane Austen, Philippa Gregory, that stuff), and she was pretty sure the stuff she was really into wouldnāt pass muster with her student.
I was still living in the same area as Alicia at the time, so I told her to ask the girl what she HAD liked about Twilight, give me the answers, and my creepy-loving ass would make a recommendation and give her a book. Based on her answers, I gave her my copy of āSalemās Lot and told her to tell the girl she could keep it as long as she liked.
I NEVER GOT IT BACK.
This girl went from āSalemās Lot to Dracula. And from Dracula to Frankenstein. And from Frankenstein into the wider world of gothic literature. By the end of the school year sheād plowed through almost fifty booksāwhich meant ALMOST THREE PER WEEK.
All it took was being told āsure, you can like Twilightā and then āitās okay, you donāt have to like Twilight.ā
A little sun, a little rain, a little loveāthatās all it takes to make a flower grow.
(And sometimes, a copy of a book you will have to accept it was time to lose, because it will bear more fruit in different soil.)
Reblogging for the positive addition!
