reading level

[cimorene]

I am far too used to children of above average verbal intelligence. I can never guess in advance when the daycare kids're too young for a book because it seems to ME that a one-year-old could sit through and understand What Do You Say, Dear? - it's only, what, like, 20 sentences! But I tried to read it to a four-year-old today who couldn't stay still all the way through an explanation of what "How do you do?" means. The class in general, with a couple of exceptions, like, don't want to be read to, only to look at the pictures and move on! o_O They're BABY PLEBES!

Comments

[rhfay.livejournal.com]

If mom and dad aren't interested in such stuff like books and reading, why should the children be any different? Many o' dem ain't got no time fer dem dere book-thingies.

Such attitudes often start early on, and can continue throughout life. The gradual erosion of verbal intelligence amongst our youth, a process growing worse with each new generation of impressionable toddlers, pre-schoolers and grade schoolers, is a frightening thing to witness first-hand.

I was amazed at the basic grammar and syntax rules they covered in my daughter's college composition class, things we covered by the junior high grades of home-school, if not earlier. I never recalled covering such basic English skills when I took the very same college course, about twenty years prior. The implications of such a thing are quite alarming.

(Reply to this)

[dreamnnightmare.livejournal.com]

the things we are ignorant of, that our forebears knew backwards and forwards! Greek! Latin! Of course the brain space that we freed up by not learning those two languages we have filled up with how to program VCRs and things like that. And who's to say it's not just as useful? It's sad that the things we care about our not being learned but we have to be careful to separate what we like and from what we need. Now, I do agree that people need to know how to read. That's how they're going to learn what kind of crap the government is trying to pull and what insurance companies are lying to them about. Or at least they have a chance if they can read.

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

We had the same problem in our family. After me and my two middle siblings who liked being read to, our youngest brother was absolutely impossible about books. He had zero attention span and no interest in stories. The only thing he wanted us to read was a segment in a Janosch book that had a poop joke in it. That was somehow endlessly funny, every time.