Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
Vicki Cobb's Blog
  • Vicki Cobb's Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Get'emĀ  to Read Widely, Help 'em to Read Deeply

10/9/2019

 
Picture
What happens  to behavior when living beings dwell in paradise?   Where everything an individual could possible want is at hand?  Plenty to eat and drink.  It's not too hot, not too cold.  Lethal danger is at a distance.  I saw it for myself when I visited the Masai Mara in Kenya many years ago.  Kenya is on the equator but the Masai plains of Kenya are elevated so the average temperature is 75 degrees every day. There are no seasons. Both night and day are 12 hours long.   Nature provided this part of the world enough space and food and water for the largest land-dwelling mammals to evolve.  For elephants, hippos, water buffaloes,  giraffes life exists in a serene landscape that is interrupted every so often with a scurry of activity when a predator gets hungry.  But for the most part, it is a peaceable kingdom.  Beasts wander through their day, not moving too fast, sleeping when they feel like it.  A Kenyan professor told me that there is little or no incentive for the human population in this environment to become inventive or technological. A subsistence life-style is not difficult.  People who live in the moderate latitudes were motivated to invent ways to make life more comfortable.  That's why those places are the source for innovation and technology.

When I was young, I heard a lecture by Nicholas Negroponte, a futurist and co-founder of what is now the MIT Media Lab.  He described a future where people would never have to leave their homes-- everything they needed could come to them with the push of a button.  (It was before we knew about the click of a mouse).  The only reason to leave home, he stated emphatically, would be to find a mate or get buried. Many skills by which people currently made a living would become obsolete.  The picture he painted horrified me.  But, I reasoned, people would still need to know how to read.  

Picture
Picture
That, too, is on the decline.  Note the graph on the left.   Except for the reading of cell phones, which is definitely on the upswing.   Note the  graph on the right.  ​In 2017 the average adult spend 2 hours and 51 minutes per day on a mobile phone. 
​
​
Reading for pleasure, to fill up the day, has been pre-empted by a plethora of entertaining activities that require little else than watching.  It seems as if the human race is devolving into doing the minimum to exist. As per Negroponte's prediction, we are getting fat and lazy.  Negroponte went on to found a movement One Laptop per Child, hoping to reach all children including those who live in the third world.   It failed for a variety of reasons, mainly because his manufactured product was poorly designed. In recent years, Negroponte has shifted focus and now says:  "If you take any world problem, any issue on the planet, the solution to that problem certainly includes education. In education, the roadblock is the laptop."


I'm not sure that's true. I think that the problem in education stems from the lack of reading and thinking regardless of the device.  Reading is the only way to get into the minds of educated people who know how to write well and think clearly.   Learning to read takes practice.  It should not be separated from thinking.  That is why my tribe of award-winning authors of nonfiction for children have created the Nonfiction Minute. . We don't just write a readable essay, we also speak it aloud.  This exposes less fluent readers the magic of content.  The Minutes just happen to be the same length as the reading passages on the standardized tests. But each Minute is a self-contained essay with a beginning, a middle and an end not an excerpt from a larger work taken out of context for the test-taker to struggle with. Our Minutes are not leveled because leveling makes text flat and eliminates voice, the humanity that makes the content come alive.  But the Nonfiction Minute is not enough to produce readers and thinkers.  They need to tackle fuller works.  

For this reason, iNK has opened a bookstore, iNK Books & Media Store.  The categories that the books cover are illustrated above.  Most of our books are interdisciplinary. They are also beautifully illustrated, carefully designed and edited to make them into learning experiences with the real world.  We will be adding books all year.  Pick a topic from the icons above that you're required to teach.  Help your students discover the pleasure of learning from a good book.  Let them build self esteem by doing something that requires effort and perseverance that is also a pleasure.  Let them experience the work of people who have spent a lifetime thinking and perfecting their craft of putting words together to make meaning.  

Otherwise, writers who think and care about educating children will also go the way of the typewriter manufacturers.  
Roxie Munro link
10/9/2019 11:59:46 am

Those stats on the decline in reading are horrifying!

Sarah Towle link
11/9/2019 04:57:05 am

Exactly! Reading widely leads to reading deeply leads to thinking critically, which results in smarter citizens (who area also more successful test-takers). Thanks for this great post, Vicki!


Comments are closed.

     Vicki Cobb

    *Award-winning author of more than 90 nonfiction books for children, mostly in science.
    *Former Contributor to the Huffington Post
    *Founder/President of iNK Think Tank, Inc.
    *Passionate advocate for the joy of learning for every child and teacher.


    Disclaimer: All opinions, typos, and grammatical errors are my own,  especially small word omissions which I often don't notice in my fervor.  

    RSS Feed

    ​​​​Archives

    March 2022
    November 2021
    August 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018

    ​Categories

    All
    Abuse
    Achievement Gap
    Adkins Jan
    Albee Sarah
    Anti Bullying
    Anti-bullying
    Art
    Author Driven Nonfiction
    Author-driven Nonfiction
    Authors On Call
    Biology
    Birds
    Black History
    BLC2018
    Book Review
    Child Abuse
    Children As Political Pawns
    Children's Nonfiction
    Citizenship
    Civics
    Civil Rights
    Class ACTS
    Climate Change
    Clinton Chelsea
    Collard III Sneed B.
    Common Core State Standards
    Conversation
    Coronavirus
    Costaldo Nancy F.
    Covid-19
    Critical Thinking
    Data-driven
    Definition
    Democracy
    Dewey John
    Dogs
    Dunphy Madeleine
    Ecology
    Education
    Educational Standards
    Electron Microscope
    Empowerment For Children
    Endangered Species
    Excellence
    Extinction
    Fact-checking
    Fleming Candace
    "flow"
    Galileo
    Girls' Education
    Global Warming
    Greenberg Jan
    Grit
    Gun Violence
    History
    History Of "school Reform"
    Home Libraries
    Hurricanes
    INK Database
    INK Database Of Books
    Insects
    Interactive Video Conferencing
    Isaac Sally
    Jeopardy Winner
    Learning
    Lesser Carolyn
    Leveled Reading
    Levinson Cynthia
    Lexiles
    Listening
    Literacy
    Literature
    Liu Eric
    March For Our Lives
    McClafferty Carla
    Mentor Texts
    Montgomery Heather L.
    Montgomery Sy
    Motivated Reasoning
    Motivation
    Munro Roxie
    Nathan Amy
    Nonfiction
    Nonfiction Minute
    Nonprofit And Education
    Opening Schools
    Patent Dorothy Hinshaw
    Pedagogy
    Picture Books
    Podcasts
    Primary Source
    Pringle Laurence
    Pundits Of The Pandemic
    Rap Music
    Reading
    Rules
    Rusch Elizabeth
    School Choice
    SchoolTube
    School Visits
    Science Experiments You Can Eat
    Science Teaching
    Semple Heidi E.Y.
    Social Skills
    Socrates
    Speaking
    Spring Fling
    Standardized Testing
    STEM
    Studies On Education
    Swanson Jennifer
    Teaching
    Technology And Children
    Thomas Peggy
    Trump
    Truth
    Voting
    Warren Andrea
    Washington George
    Weatherford Carole Boston
    Webinars
    Work With Us
    World War II
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Links

The Nonfiction Minute
​

​iNK Think Tank website

​Vicki Cobb's Kids' Fun Page

We Dare You Videos


Company

iNK Think Tank, Inc. is a nonprofit with the mission of using nonfiction children's literature in classrooms

Contact

vicki@inkthinktank.org
​

© 2019


© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.