Mamacita says:  I don’t think there are any words coined yet that would adequately describe the complete and total loathing I have for simplified, edited versions of good books.

I’ve heard quadrillions of elementary teachers argue that small children learn best when there are few challenges, but I have to disagree with that, too.  How condescending!

I am not saying that we should require second graders to read War and Peace and understand it.  I am just saying that exposure to big words expands not only a child’s vocabulary, but also his/her understanding of the world.  Everything is Six Degrees of Separation, but if we withhold that first degree from our children, how can they be expected to connect what they’ve never been exposed to, to anything else?

Seriously, I have to wonder if maybe our schools are too afraid that the ADULTS won’t understand the words, and will be made to look ridiculous to the children who WILL understand if they’re give the chance.  I’ve worked with a lot of adults who have very small vocabularies.  Not acceptable.

As for those “educators” – and I use that term loosely here – who think that the Flopsy Bunnies ate lettuce that made them feel sleepy sounds better than the fact that the lettuce had a soporific effect on the bunnies. . . . well, those are not educators; they’re merely censors.  The vocabulary in Potter’s little stories has opened many a door to a child: a door that would have remained closed if “soporific” had been replace with the cheap, bargain-basement “made the bunnies feel sleepy.”  I do not believe in dumbing-down anything for our children.  Children who are exposed to nothing but dumbed-down readings stand a good chance of being dumbed-down, themselves.

As you can no doubt figure out, I am against anything that does not allow our children’s minds to grow and expand and connect the dots from one thing to another, and from there to Alpha Centauri.  Boring little limited-vocabulary stories are not the answer.

The contrast between a third grade literature textbook of our grandparents’ day, and the limited vocabulary, politically correct reading books of today, is horrifyingly large.  There is no way a typical modern elementary reader could be construed as literature, whereas my mother’s third grade Lit book had excerpts from Les Miserables in it!

Perhaps one answer might be to bring back remedial reading classes and to hell with self esteem.  And whose self esteem are we talking about, anyway?  The child’s, or the parent’s?  I’ll put my money on the parents.  And wouldn’t self esteem soar on its own, EARNED, if our children were taught to read properly, without the distraction of other children reading encyclopediae in the next seat over?  (Self esteem is earned, or it is nothing.  Nobody can give someone self esteem.  Self esteem must be earned.  EARNED.  )

If I had a nickel for every little boy I’ve ever seen, sitting out in the hallway with a tutor or a helpful older student,  struggling mightily to read Harry Potter because of the wonder and whimsy and elegance and cool of it, when wild horses couldn’t drag that same boy near enough to a limited-vocabulary horror to spit on it, I’d be rich today.

Part of the problem with many elementary reading programs today is the fact that the reading material is boring, stupid, condescending, edited, highly censored, and so politically correct and squeaky clean that there is nothing left to hold anyone’s interest.

Add to this the fact that there are some school librarians who take the “suggested audience’s age” blurb on a book seriously, and it’s little wonder that so many children who have the potential to be excellent, excited, interested readers are simply shunted to the back of the room and forced to “study” little baby things they outgrew eons ago.  Good parents will bring their children to the public library, but what if some good parents don’t have a public library within practical reach?

When my husband was in lower elementary, he used to bring National Geographic magazines to school, so he’d have something to do while other kids were still working on the lessons.  One of my lower elementary teachers took Gone with the Wind away from me because watching me read it was making a few of the other children feel bad about their own abilities.  Our children were not allowed access to the library books “upstairs” because their numerical age was too low and the librarian was an ass a firm believer in matching a child’s age to the recommended age on the book cover.

They brought books from home to take up the slack. You know: forty minutes of wonder stretched over a six-hour day.  But what about those eager little readers whose homes had no books?  They were counting on the school to provide worthy reading material for them, and all they got was pablum.

I hope very hard that all elementary teachers allow their students access to whatever level of reading material they are ready for, not just some prescribed limited heavily-edited, “children’s version” censored horror for kids with problems unlocking symbols from the page.  Yes, those kids deserve material for their level, but THERE ARE OTHER LEVELS, and wouldn’t it be loverly if those high-achieving good readers were allowed access to Stephen Hawking and Jane Austen in the second grade if they wanted Stephen Hawking and Jane Austen?

Remember Charles Wallace Murray, trying to cope with first grade when he had the intelligence and reading ability of a highly gifted adult?  And if you don’t know who Charles Wallace Murray is, I hope you’re not a teacher. . . .

Our society is far too fixated on equality in the classroom when the reality is that some children will always be more advanced and some children will always be behind.  Separate them, so some children can fly while others are still trying to learn to walk.  Requiring such disparate abilities to study the same things at the same time at the same level will only frustrate both.

But then, who really cares?  The only truly  important thing in school is to prepare for those tests, isn’t it. . . . .