Y Kan't Chirren Read?

Reading is fundamental.  Remember that program - RIF?  I do, though I’m not sure it exists anymore.  It was an elementary school initiative back in the day in which you read books and earned points towards the illustrious prize of a personal pan pizza from your local Pizza Hut.  It gave kids who weren’t nerdy little weirdoes like me an incentive to do something that would ultimately shape their future – in the land of the literate, the reader survives.  Though it’s often said that you use math every day, I find that I can get by without basic mathematical skills – I can barely do the homework of elementary school children.  Being a language that I never quite mastered, math was always a foreign soil onto which I tread obliquely and with unseasonably high tension.  I remember being in 4^th grade and having a teacher admonish me about my math skills, it went something like this:

Ms. L: “EH, every career on earth uses math.  How will you get a job if you refuse to learn long division?”
Little EH: “Cavemen don’t need math.”
Ms. L: “Being a caveman is not a career…”
Little EH: “Is so, I’ll do historical re-enactments.”
Ms. L: “That’s a limited field…and who will help you count your…dinosaur eggs?”
Little EH: “I’ll get a cave bitch.”

 Ok, so it didn’t quite go like that, but you get the idea.  Reading, on the other hand, was thrilling.  How else would I have known anything about cavemen and their bitches if I hadn’t read about it somewhere?  Reading is a useful skill because it allows you to fill your head with all the useless information you want without the hassle of talking to real, live people or figuring out how to carry numbers.  Numbers are impersonal and people are annoying – but words and the created people that jump out from them are exquisite.

Perhaps this is why I can’t understand half of my students – because half of them HATE reading.  Ok, hate might be too strong a word (especially since I have a hand full that bring down the hatred quotient), but they’re certainly apathetic about.  In the world of instant information, the intardnetz, and my(crack)space, kids just aren’t interested in the chronicles of anything (unless it’s a youtube video).

There was originally a pretty deep point to this whole post but I keep getting distracted by Michael Pollan – I think I’ll just drop it and go read instead.