Missing the Best to Give More

My husband and I have had a wonderful life.  However, career moves that gave us the opportunity to live in several states may have made us less aware of the changes in America.  Perhaps we saw the changes as being regional changes rather than the overall changes in America.  Before Law School, I was a teacher, teaching both elementary and high school in three different states.  The career changes and the moves made me unaware of great changes in education.  I fear that two important changes have had a negative result.

One of those changes was dropping the teaching of cursive writing.  That may seem the least of education problems, but learning cursive writing had a greater impact than most of us realize.  Writing cursive stimulates a sequence of thousands of tiny micro-movements, each letter of a different shape requires the brain to utilize various problems, with fingers, wrists, and other parts of the brain working together.  Typing uses the same single movement. I have fussed about the loss of grace in penmanship, but I did not realize that an even greater loss was the reduced stimulation of the brain.  Furthermore, tests have shown that when students type, most of the brain goes silent. 

Changes in teaching and utilizing reading have changed, especially in upper grades, reducing assignments of reading to a few pages, rather that entire stories or books.  Young people are arriving at college unable to read more than a page or two, apparently struggling to retain attention to read more.  I cannot even imagine how chopping books into pieces serves a justifiable purpose.

I believe children are still curious and eager to learn the magic of those letters on a page.  Why are we missing that opportunity when children are eager to learn.  To quote Anna Quinden, "Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.  The are the destination and the journey.  They are home."  

Christopher Robin

Perhaps we are overlooking opportunities starring us in the face.  Are we giving children toys that talk rather than letting them make up their own words and their own stories.  Perhaps we are diminishing imaginations that would help children get ready for learning.    

I wrote this blog a few days ago, and since then Dolly  Parton has passed away.  She was a Hero for encouraging youngsters to read, and through her Imagination Library a gift of over 325 million books were gifted to children.  

Now, instead of encouraging children, it appears to me that too many people are actively involved in banning books when they should be delighted to see kids reading them.  When I see parents actively, and too often successfully, getting books that were childhood favorites removed from schools and libraries I want to cry.  As an adult I have collected many of those wonderful books and have gifted them to new babies.  I stopped collecting several years ago because I found too many children's books dull, obviously trying to impose a message rather than telling a good story.  When books like Charlottes Web, The Giving Tree, and Where the Wild Things Are, are banned, no wonder children stop reading.  My advice to new parents is to find the Classic Books from generations ago and read them to your children.  They can still be found in used bookstores, and many are being published anew.

I know that teachers have their hands full, doing their best.  Perhaps we have lost focus on the basics, in order to crowd in the overwhelming requirements now demanded.  Perhaps by wanting to give our children the best, we have lost track of giving them the more important things that we have left behind.