How to Raise Boys Who Read
Hint: Not with gross-out books and video-game bribes
The Wall Street Journal
Education was once understood as training for freedom. Not merely the transmission of information, education entailed the formation of manners and taste. Aristotle thought we should be raised "so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; this is the right education."
"Plato before him," writes C. S. Lewis, "had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting, and hateful."
This kind of training goes against the grain, and who has time for that? How much easier to meet children where they are....
One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far.
5 comments:
loved this! I saw this linked elsewhere but I never read it. So glad I found it again here!
I was just sent this link in an email. It was a great and encouraging article. We have two great readers and I agree that the limiting of electronic media is key.
I'm guilty of buying Captain Underpants at a garage sale. Bryce, of course, loved it. I did not. I'm trying to fill our shelves with better things.
THis was great Wendy! It really makes us think:)
I hope that you have a nice week!
i saw that a few weeks ago and was so glad someone wrote about it in a larger media outlet. my man gave me a tip about looking for books written pre 1950 from the library. many of those are my kids faves so far!
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