Learning in the Absence of Education
Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
What is all the Fuss about Reading (Fiction) Anyway!
(continued)
I am a busy person and don't always have the luxury of the time to delve deep into a novel. I prefer to be entertained with a quick movie a couple of times a week, or the odd television serial. I allow myself lots of time for reading for information, not because I need to know something, but simply for the pleasure of reading and the opportunity to expand my knowledge and understanding of the world I live in. Often novels and stories can stimulate questions and offer knowledge about that world, and I appreciate the role fiction has in conveying culture. But so do many other art forms, and none of these attract a fraction of the attention reading fiction does at school!
I am sometimes amazed at how my men also love to read - for information that is. Perhaps with not the same drive I have, but then I love to study, to stretch my mind by contacting other minds through text. I’d love to expand into the world of conversation more, but find social situations physically stressful, because of my many allergies and sensitivities. So I maintain social contact by writing and reading. The men in the family are all practical, and prefer to use their minds to put their hands to work. Reading is purely for obtaining information so they can engage in pleasurable practical work. Reading magazines and newspapers offer a different kind of information, as do Lego and computer catalogues. The boys tend to read a lot when playing computer games, and have found the stories woven into those games fascinating.
More and more I am tending to celebrate the practical natures of the men in my family, and to recognise they don't have to read fiction in order to succeed at a whole host of very important tasks. As I watch my boys continue to develop their reading skills without engaging in fiction I have to ask why everyone places so much emphasis on young children not only reading fiction, but loving to as well!
Just because for some of us it is a rich source of learning, does that mean everyone has to do it? But that is how education is set up. By age ten every child knows that the ‘bookish’ student in the class is the one who does well in school. But this is because education is set up this way, and doesn’t value learning other than book learning. Forcing children to learn to love fiction is just one way the education system turn many children off from building general reading skills.
Home education is no exception. Pick up any newsletter or journal, speak to any home educator, and reading comes up as a major issue. This is quickly followed by writing, and then spelling. The educational community is obsessed by these narrowly focussed skills.
I mentioned earlier the television. When I was a child televisions were still relatively new; videos and computers didn't exist. My children have grown up with both learning media. I had access to a library, full of words and pictures. I needed to learn to read print. My children access the world via the television, videos and computer. Their need for printed words is, by comparison, much diminished. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Our society is subjected to rapid change - should we accept what the new technologies bring, open minded, or cling to past ways of doing things? Naturally I encourage critical viewing and usage of these technological learning tools. We discuss what we see and use, always making the experience meaningful to our lives. Used in this way, my children are learning quite a lot. And I think they are learning much the same things I learned from reading books in my younger days. More perhaps. A lot depends on the type of books a person reads, and how many... or what a person watches on television, or uses on the computer...
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Excerpt from Learning in the Absence of Home Education: Essays on Homeschooling
© Beverley Paine, 1999
