Books = Toys

Baby Girl loves them both.

I was over in Tampa a while back, visiting Baby Girl (and her parents, of course). We sat on the floor, a big basket of toys between us. She would pull one out, play with it for a few minutes and then toss it aside. Move on to the next toy. At some point I noticed books in her toy basket, mostly the heavy, cardboard books and the “crinkly” ones that are indestructible.

She pulled out the books, one by one, turned the pages, and pointed to the lines she wanted me to read. Sometimes we read the same book over and over; other times we powered through them, like she was on a mission to master them all.

Being the old lady that I am, my first thought was, “What are these books doing in the toys? I need to put them on the bookshelf!”

And then I had another thought: “Wait. Books = Toys. Toys = Books.

What a concept.

Books and reading are together one of the multiple reasons why we have decided to homeschool Baby Girl. We want her to think of books as toys for as long as possible.

I’ve never taught k - 5, but I suspect we do an adequate or better job with this concept in the Elementary schools. When I taught 6th, I had rooms full of enthusiastic readers. But reading is like a light on a dimmer switch, gradually losing its glow, and by the time our kids graduate high school their desire for books has been, in many cases, turned to off. Well meaning middle school and high school teachers have unintentionally pounded the love for reading until it resembles road kill, “squashed by a truck, and then (got) flattened 10,000 times more, and then summer dried it out flat and hard as a man-hole cover” (thanks to Brian Doyle for those words).

We English teachers love our books. We love them so much that we routinely force them upon our innocent, once book loving, students. Kids who don’t give a damn about the French Revolution, the Dust Bowl, or a mad Scottish king. Yes, they should read these books—when the time is right, not necessarily when a teacher tells them to. Why? Because we turn these great books into content, like social studies or Math, as if they needed to understand every word of book A before they can read Book B.

This is not why we read.

We send them home to read alone, another burdensome homework assignment in a life already too full of homework. We administer 100 question tests (that’ll keep them busy). We tell them they are WRONG in their interpretations, as if there were only one way to read a book. Using these methods and others like them we produce an American society where only approximately 25% have read a book in the past year (statista.com).

And as if that is not enough educational malpractice, there is THE TEST, which will be the subject of many future posts.

This is not what I want for Baby Girl. I want her to associate books not only with toys, but with something warm and comfortable, like the love of a grandmother for her granddaughter. BG’s parents read to her always; she has a great foundation that we will build on for years to come. There will be ZERO tests.

PS. I think you need to download the substack app in order to interact. Am I right? And thank you ALL for joining my blog and my journey. Feel free to share!