THE NEWEST READER
By Charles E. Kraus
Discovering that you can read is one of those monumental aha moments. A life changer. A right of passage. The door swings wide and you are suddenly looking out at a panorama of limitless possibilities. Millions of concepts, stories, characters, explanations, laughs, tears, places, enchantments, just sitting there waiting for someone to turn the page.
I'm a parent, a grandparent, the husband of a teacher, and I'm a reader. There are lots of readers in our family. The latest is eight-year-old Alice, who is suddenly reading everything.
During her yet-to-be-born phase, you know, when her mom reported feeling some movement, a kick, a turn, as the fledgling was transforming from a potential person into the real thing, Alice's dad began reading to her. The nightly ritual continued through infancy and beyond. Reading was assumed. Anticipated. These days, of course, Alice reads to her father, or just goes off into a corner, perhaps in the yard, under that tree, and reads to herself.
A variety of methods purport to teach children the essential skill of translating symbols into language. Maybe some work better than others, depending on the child. But self taught or formally instructed, it seems to me rather natural for people to find themselves reading -- just as soon as doing so becomes desirable.
Paul Goodman, the 1960's maverick intellectual and author of books such as, Growing Up Absurd and Compulsory Miseducation, recalled teaching illiterate army recruits to read within the span of a few weeks. What method did he use? Very simply, he said, "we told them they had to read to get out of bootcamp." That was a motivator! My own children attended a school where formal reading was introduced pretty late in the curriculum. The delay upset the kids, who demanded to be taught sooner. The skill was seen as advantageous. A right. Nowadays, students, well or poorly educated can be found not only talking on their smartphones, but texting on them.
Recently, Alice reported that her little sister had come to her in the middle of the night, frightened by a nightmare.
"I told her I'd wrap her in a monster protector," Alice reported. She tucked the sheet completely around Lila and proclaimed the four-year-old safe from harm. Where'd you get that idea, mom wanted to know. She'd read about it while thumbing a parenting book left on the table. The takeaway was more than learning how to stave off bogeymen, it was that solutions are often just waiting to be read.
A few weeks ago, Alice and her family came for a visit. Her dad brought along a tent complete with a bag of aluminum tubes that, once assembled, would form a complex superstructure. My granddaughter and I made several ill-fated attempts to put the contraption together. I was running out of patiences. Looking up, I spotted Alice on the iPhone.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Googling the instructions," she explained.
Of course she was. Somebody had to do it.
