Should kids only be taught to read books?

[November Rain]

The major problem with reading is that kids are forced to read literature in school. Literature that nobody cares about. How the hell do you expect a 13 year old boy to care about roll of thunder hear my cry? When I was around 11 or 12 I read one of the Jason Bourne novels and was completely blown away by the fact that books could be interesting. Books could be like movies, tv, or comic books.

I have no problem having kids read the classics, but no kid is going ENJOY reading if they're forced to read things they find boring.

shouldn't literature be broken up then into literature that one enjoys, literature that pushes one's language development and literature that is used as literary examples of uses of various forms of the english language and also writing styles.

 

[Spider-Nerd]

shouldn't literature be broken up then into literature that one enjoys, literature that pushes one's language development and literature that is used as literary examples of uses of various forms of the english language and also writing styles.

Absolutely. I think however what's lacking is the encouragement that there IS literature that one would enjoy. When you're only bombarded by literature that doesn't interest you, there's a tendency to associate reading with boring.

 

[SuperFerret]

We can remove text like "****** jim" so kids are shielded from historical context.

Yeah. I'd be pissed if I opened my favorite book and there was an update that changed the content. It'd be like any time you pop in a Star Wars DVD it would automatically update to the most recent Lucas-inspired "fix".

 

[WildcatNC]

TV and Internet have destroyed the attention span of kids. I only see it getting worse. I love books and own an entire floor to ceiling shelf full of them.

Nothing will ever replace holding an actual book and turning the pages for me. Just something about it.

Not to say I don't appreciate the convenience of Nooks, Kindles, etc. I understand the utility, but they will never replace books for me. There are surely many ways to integrate different forms of media for learning purposes.

 

[November Rain]

Absolutely. I think however what's lacking is the encouragement that there IS literature that one would enjoy. When you're only bombarded by literature that doesn't interest you, there's a tendency to associate reading with boring.

very true but i think the appreciation of boring literature will come with age eventually as at least you will learn something from it.

as for the internet, perosonally it's got me into reading far more than it did before asi generally don't pick up books in my spare time and now indulge into the global opinions of others on a regular basis.

now i'm not sure what the majority of people use the internet for but i would presume it could be a tool to get people reading at least something and hopefully this should be reflected by the average reading level going up from my generation into the newer ones coming through.

heck, it might even close that male/female gap that's been around for ages

 

[SpideyInATree]

Absolutely. I think however what's lacking is the encouragement that there IS literature that one would enjoy. When you're only bombarded by literature that doesn't interest you, there's a tendency to associate reading with boring.

It also depends on the teacher too. I luckily had some very decent English teachers that took time to get to know the kids in the class instead of throwing the mindless teaching plan at them.

In my senior year they gave us a list of 100 literary books we had to do for our final book reports and most of the books I knew of but had absolutely no interest because I knew they'd be boring as crap. However, my teacher pointed out A Clockwork Orange and, man, what a find that was!

 

[WildcatNC]

very true but i think the appreciation of boring literature will come with age eventually as at least you will learn something from it.

as for the internet, perosonally it's got me into reading far more than it did before asi generally don't pick up books in my spare time and now indulge into the global opinions of others on a regular basis.

now i'm not sure what the majority of people use the internet for but i would presume it could be a tool to get people reading at least something and hopefully this should be reflected by the average reading level going up from my generation into the newer ones coming through.

heck, it might even close that male/female gap that's been around for ages

Porn, Facebook, and video of people doing stupid things and injuring themselves account for 90% or more of internet traffic.

 

[November Rain]

Porn, Facebook, and video of people doing stupid things and injuring themselves account for 90% or more of internet traffic.

just as i thought, the world is doomed...

 

[WildcatNC]

just as i thought, the world is doomed...

Pretty much. We only gotta wait another year or so though

 

[Spidey-Bat]

And this is good how exactly?

Because they were meant to be read and understood by the contemporary audience.

This is one thing I despised about how I was taught Shakespeare. From 8th grade to high school, we read Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. The first 3 I could vaguely understand as we read them. For Hamlet, I thought "**** it, I'm reading it in modern English." And guess what happened? I enjoyed it! Now, which is more important, understanding a dead dialect from 500 years or enjoying the material?

That's great, but you still didn't answer my question. What are some classic works of literature published on the internet?

I don't care HOW kids read, it's the quality of what they read that important here.

A lot of great literature wasn't considered classic until long after their publication. The Great Gatsby sold very poorly until after Fitzgerald's death. So to expect an eBook to be considered a classic when the "genre" has been around less than 15 years is unrealistic.

 

[Teelie]

We can remove text like "****** jim" so kids are shielded from historical context.

That's altering for political correctness and text books already do that even if it's completely irrelevant to my original point. Every few years this springs up as a controversy how a classic literary story is sanitized so making a claim that eBooks will do that is too late. Printed text already does this.

That's great, but you still didn't answer my question. What are some classic works of literature published on the internet?

I don't care HOW kids read, it's the quality of what they read that important here.

As to what modern literature has been printed in eBooks only? Probably none because it's still published in paper as well. This is an absurd strawman argument. I can't tell you something that doesn't exist yet so your response is we must assume it will never happen and should ignore it even though it's inevitable it will happen.

a clear sign of a child's imagination is that you can take a child with a massive natural iq and give them a simple task to perform and they will fail it because they lack the scope to think beyond what has been presented to them

in a sense, the mcguyver quality, which comes later on in life.

And reading from a book as opposed to a monitor or a tablet alters this how? Every last argument you've made against using something besides books has been invalidated by the fact it's still applicable to learning from an eBook or other digital format.

So basically, all the arguments against it are because you (ie; anyone against it) think they should learn how you did.

 

[November Rain]

that comment was to your kids are imaginative comment

besides teelie, you keep going on about learning format.

you do know the term 'book' is just being used her for a literature, not an actual hardcopy BOOK

as in we could have a conversation about learning the piano on a keyboard or an interactive monitor is just the same as learning it with a piano.

no one is discussing the development of technology as an alternative learning tool. I don't understand why this is so hard to understand, i've said it like four times now.

i'm a researcher and back in the day, old people use to go to libraries to research papers, now i can get it off the internet BUT the emphasis of researching is consistent throughout the times. i'm not against technology, i'm pro technology as it makes my life far simpler but i still have to research stuff in the same way kids still should have to read at least the fundamental literature pieces, if not expand out into other forms and other representations of media based expression.

 

[SuperFerret]

Because they were meant to be read and understood by the contemporary audience.

This is one thing I despised about how I was taught Shakespeare. From 8th grade to high school, we read Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. The first 3 I could vaguely understand as we read them. For Hamlet, I thought "**** it, I'm reading it in modern English." And guess what happened? I enjoyed it! Now, which is more important, understanding a dead dialect from 500 years or enjoying the material?

First of all, Shakespeare's dialect was something he mostly made up, and even then it's not that hard to understand. At any rate, that's still not something that should happen. A great many stories need to evoke the time that they were written, and the language used to write them is important to that, and it's important to enjoying the story.

 

[Mario_Galaxy]

Porn, Facebook, and video of people doing stupid things and injuring themselves account for 90% or more of internet traffic.

Too true! The Internet can be a wonderful resource, which is why I usually play devil's advocate when my friends and I have this sort of discussion. So much is available to someone via the computer and it can potentially educate, but it's everyday usage is the exact opposite.

Overall though the internet is in a much better position than books, which are automatically deemed lame, boring, and nerdy (well, except magazines I guess). That to me is the greatest shame, because literally ANYTHING can be taught/learned through books. There is a direct link towards intelligence and reading, but it seems that a lot of people just are not interested.

 

[SuperFerret]

Also, children are very imaginative. It's one of their defining traits. It's just that adults have the skill and knowledge to articulate their imaginings into works of art. Of course, the numbers of artists to other adults shows that many adults either don't retain their imagination (I blame most forms of organized schooling) or don't make use of it.

 

[November Rain]

Also, children are very imaginative. It's one of their defining traits. It's just that adults have the skill and knowledge to articulate their imaginings into works of art. Of course, the numbers of artists to other adults shows that many adults either don't retain their imagination (I blame most forms of organized schooling) or don't make use of it.

don't get me wrong, children have a greater potential, to become more imaginative. we are all have a larger right brain dominance when we are younger and most people end up more left brained as they grow up.

hence why we put up so much time in trying to nuture them into becoming creative.

Hoever without the necessary stimuli, they are simple thinking creatures.

so you are right, creative people are likely to retain their right brain dominance into adulthood.

but that potential is lost as people grow old. also as we grow older, the opportunities to retain a creative lifestyle is limited as we are prone to develop skills which makes us more likely to earn money. If we could all live lives without the necessity to earn money to maintain a certain lifetyle, i think there would be a higher number of creative members of our society.

it's like anything, a naturally great runner will never make it if they don't undergo proper training. All natural skills we have in life need to be nutured to become something special.

I don't think children have the ability to do that on their own, otherwise the education system would be far shorter than just under two decades.

 

[Hobgoblin]

I'm sad that books seem to be going the way of the dinosaur but at this point, getting a kid to read anything]/i] seems like an accomplishment. If e-books gets a kid to be interested in learning, so be it.

 

[Darthphere]

I was kind of a bookworm when I was a kid but that was mostly because of the way I was brought up. Sure, I had Nintendo and watched a lot of TV but my parents bought me books and taught me to enjoy reading from an early age and that's something that stuck with me. Almost everytime we were assigned a book in school, I had already read it. I remember kids thinking it was weird that I was reading Hemingway in middle school.

To the question at hand though, I find merit in showing movies and television shows to kids as a learning tool. Also, I think most schools have Cinematography classes. I took one in high school where we watched movies, discussed them and learned some stuff. It can happen.

 

[Spider-Nerd]

That's altering for political correctness and text books already do that even if it's completely irrelevant to my original point. Every few years this springs up as a controversy how a classic literary story is sanitized so making a claim that eBooks will do that is too late. Printed text already does this.



As to what modern literature has been printed in eBooks only? Probably none because it's still published in paper as well. This is an absurd strawman argument. I can't tell you something that doesn't exist yet so your response is we must assume it will never happen and should ignore it even though it's inevitable it will happen.


And reading from a book as opposed to a monitor or a tablet alters this how? Every last argument you've made against using something besides books has been invalidated by the fact it's still applicable to learning from an eBook or other digital format.

So basically, all the arguments against it are because you (ie; anyone against it) think they should learn how you did.

I don't think anyone cares about what the medium one is reading on is. I know I don't. I could give two ****s about whether a kid is reading on their ipad, kindle, or reading a hard copy of the book as long as they're actually reading the book.

 

[SuperFerret]

don't get me wrong, children have a greater potential, to become more imaginative. we are all have a larger right brain dominance when we are younger and most people end up more left brained as they grow up.

hence why we put up so much time in trying to nuture them into becoming creative.

Hoever without the necessary stimuli, they are simple thinking creatures.

so you are right, creative people are likely to retain their right brain dominance into adulthood.

but that potential is lost as people grow old. also as we grow older, the opportunities to retain a creative lifestyle is limited as we are prone to develop skills which makes us more likely to earn money. If we could all live lives without the necessity to earn money to maintain a certain lifetyle, i think there would be a higher number of creative members of our society.

it's like anything, a naturally great runner will never make it if they don't undergo proper training. All natural skills we have in life need to be nutured to become something special.

I don't think children have the ability to do that on their own, otherwise the education system would be far shorter than just under two decades.

Imagination is that potential. Imagining something isn't a skill that needs to be honed, you either have it or you don't. Developing and expressing that imagination is something that needs to be fine tuned.

 

[November Rain]

raw studies haven't shown this is the case, one's ability to be creative can actually be quantified with neurological studies.

as with any characteristic, no one is completely one thing or another, but if honed, you can either make the most of your earlier potential and potentially break out of the limitations of your natural way with practice and reiteration of the basic skills.

hence why good people in stuff become great and how great people naturally become legendary. We can push the limitations of our nature with hard training etc.

but it's all still something that needs to be fed. I think you underestimate the amount of background work that goes into habouring this, with all the imaginative kids shows and toys and playgroups and things they get into from day one. I think you take that all for granted but if you were to involve yourself with kids from other cultures which don't care that much about such things, you'll really see what i'm talking about here.

our culture's based around making people as imaginative as possible from day one which i think is skewing a pecerption that kids are blue sky thinkers.

 

[Obsidian]

Why can't the elements of internet, music, film, comic books, television, animation, and more be studied just as much as books before high school or college in American public schools? Why only books or written text and the others made to be though of as disruptive or mind-numbing? They can be taken seriously like others too? And I don't mean things like learning to type or music notation either. Think much deeper than that?

Oh I'm sure elements of all can be studied. First you would need the school to have a curriculum planned out in advance before a class was commissioned. Teachers do integrate elements of those but to have classes for each requires district approval before anything else. And right now schools aren't exactly getting a great budget to work with so classes specifically focused on those elements aren't a priority. The fundamentals are (math, science, english, and history).

 

[Polaris23]

Personally i would say that firing up someone's imagination is one of the best things you can provide a child.

and the root of all this comes in the form of understanding the developing the neurons which sets this off.

personally i think the root of all creative is rooted in literature, so understanding how it works will ultimately spread into other forms of creative mediums.

that's in the same way, trying to get into animation without a basis in art is kinda pointless.

i think adapting to new technology is something that we may have had to learn but it will come so naturally to the younger generations, it's not like apple has to hold worldwide seminars on how to use its products.

Agreed, and this is why children should be taught via books.

 

[November Rain]

i would definitely say some sort of media study shoudl be brought into mainstream curriculum.

stuff especially like understanding the dangers of online pedos could be incorporated into this but also the power of the media with regards to the written word, newspapers, advertising, internet, the news etc and how different techniques are used to spread hope, hate and influence one another.

alot of people take the media for granted and its the reason why we have such poor news reports and one sided news. If we teach our children at a basic age to want more from the media, than these corporations will have to adapt to keep up with a smarter generation of consumers, and hopefully it will clean up some of the mess we see in it at the moment.

knowledge is power.