Re: [UnschoolingDiscussion] growing up REAL and READING
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OOh, ooh! It's a tangent I know, but I have to share this related
story --
The National Book Festival has been on BookTV and a book
reviewer/author named Michael Dirda spoke about his new prize-winning book, which was all
about growing up poor in the heartland and becoming a passionate reader. In
fact, how being a reader had become his whole identity. I think it's called "An
Open Book" - will look up later.
Anyway, he said money was so tight and his mother so frugal that she
taught them to only do school reports on things that started with the letter
"a" -- she would always go for the introductory encyclopedia offers (Volume A
for 59 cents!) and then cancel before she had to pay $9.95 for any other
volumes. So he and his sisters had a whole shelf full of reference sources at home,
but only on things that started with "a" like asteroids and artichokes and
Argentina and Alabama and alligators. He said the teachers always gave them good
grades and never noticed. :)
Btw, his book sounded absolutely marvelous for anyone here who was
interested in the reading thread before -- this author was very much a self-made
reader, with no role models or encouragement of any kind, it sounded like. He
read exactly what he pleased, from comic books to Sherlock Holmes (and his
description of reading the Hound of the Baskervilles for the first time was
delicious to a kindred reading spirit like me.) JJ
story --
The National Book Festival has been on BookTV and a book
reviewer/author named Michael Dirda spoke about his new prize-winning book, which was all
about growing up poor in the heartland and becoming a passionate reader. In
fact, how being a reader had become his whole identity. I think it's called "An
Open Book" - will look up later.
Anyway, he said money was so tight and his mother so frugal that she
taught them to only do school reports on things that started with the letter
"a" -- she would always go for the introductory encyclopedia offers (Volume A
for 59 cents!) and then cancel before she had to pay $9.95 for any other
volumes. So he and his sisters had a whole shelf full of reference sources at home,
but only on things that started with "a" like asteroids and artichokes and
Argentina and Alabama and alligators. He said the teachers always gave them good
grades and never noticed. :)
Btw, his book sounded absolutely marvelous for anyone here who was
interested in the reading thread before -- this author was very much a self-made
reader, with no role models or encouragement of any kind, it sounded like. He
read exactly what he pleased, from comic books to Sherlock Holmes (and his
description of reading the Hound of the Baskervilles for the first time was
delicious to a kindred reading spirit like me.) JJ
> I was very far from knowing anything about unschooling in those days,[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> but I do remember, once, saying to her teacher - "Kind of weird to
> 'authentically' assess what is not authentically learned."
>
> This was because my daughter had been assigned to learn about the
> kangaroo rat. All California 4th graders learn about California. So the
> class had been divided into groups - the desert, ocean, mountains, and
> valleys groups. She was in the desert group. Then, within the group
> they each got assigned an animal to learn about. She got the kangaroo
> rat. At the time, she was horse-crazy. She also was crazy about
> dolphins and whales and other creatures of the sea. She was NOT
> interested in kangaroo rats.
>
>