This time on reading

Sydney blogger and writer, Sacha Molitorisz, has been reading Parentonomics. In this post on literacy he quotes my thoughts on the subject:

All the while, I've had the words of a Melbourne academic bouncing about my noggin.

"What is the deal with all the reading?" asks Joshua Gans, a professor of management at the Uni of Melbourne's Business School. A father-of-three, Gans has written a book called Parentonomics, which is out next week. In in, he looks at parenthood through an economist's eyes, which leads to some interesting insights.

He writes:

"It seems that as soon as we work out a child can see, we thrust letters in their face, read them books carefully pointing out the words so they know we're not making it up, and then, when they get to school, we count down the days to literacy.

"I am not an innocent bystander in all this fuss. We did everything we could to get Child No. 1 to read. When she was just two (now this may sound competely ridiculous, but it wasn't at the time), we labelled everything in the house using the pretty 'Comic Sans' font. Visitors were astonished but soon appreciated the fact that they could easily find the bathroom. It was at least three more years before Child No. 1 made much of the signs."

Gans argues that a lot of time and energy is wasted by overzealous parents pushing their kids into literacy prematurely.

"Learning to read is excruciating," Gans writes. "It is a tough activity and, what is more, the case for expecting kids to be reading at six rather than by eight is not particularly strong. In Scandinavian countries, they don't begin formal training until the age of seven."

Which brings us back to irony.

"Now I am not one to rail against books," he writes. "I'm an academic after all and I guess I am writing one now."

What he does next is examine the way literacy is taught and promoted in our education system. According to Gans, it's not all good. At this point, I don't really have much experience of how literacy is taught in our schools _ although I don't remember any particular dramas in my own case. Apart from the lingering curse of being a dodgy punner. (Sorry about the title.)

This reflects some of the stuff I was saying around the time of the 2020 Summit.

Molitorisz has his own book on parenting entitled (and I can't believe no one got that before), From Here to Paternity.

The frindle is mightier than the word

I know I am late to extol the virtues of this one (10 years too late) but Frindle by Andrew Clements is a gem of a book. It is about a boy who has ideas. One day, pretty much to irritate a dogmatic teacher, he comes up with the idea of replacing the word, pen, with the word, frindle. Hi-jinks ensues.

My two eldest just loved the book. The whole notion that words come from somewhere and that their value was in how people understood their meaning was a great lesson. I might even be able to explain to them one day how it is that a piece of paper can be worth something. For now, we concentrated on the words. I even left them with a lesson from Shakespeare who is credited with introducing countless words into the English language including countless. It was an olympian effort; well at least after he invented the word olympian.

It has sold over 2 million copies but is unknown and seemingly unavailable here in Australia.

Every Olympiad: the Geography Challenge

Our family has a tradition (well, we did it in 2004 and will do it again tomorrow) of watching the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and playing a geography game. The challenge is this: when a team comes out during the ceremony, you have to find the associated country on the world map. What is more you have to find it before the next team is announced.

Now this would appear pretty straightforward but for the fact that the smaller teams tend to be from the countries hardest to find. You have less than 30 seconds. I guess this year we could employ Google Earth to help us out but that would be cheating.

Anyhow, it is one way of turning a television event into an educational benefit.

Travel accessories

In Slate, Sara Mosle talks about the stuff you could use to ease the pain of travelling with kids. In my mind, much of it seemed like overkill (and there was no mention of the critical DVD players, DSs or iPods) but this was sensible advice:

Over time, I've learned a few lessons. First, although infants can ride on a parent's lap up to age 2, you should spring for the extra seat if you can possibly afford it. That's especially true if you're traveling alone and can't trade off holding the baby. Otherwise, expect to emerge from the cabin at trip's end looking as if you were mauled by a feral cat. I know of nothing that prevents this except perhaps large, leather animal-trainer mittens. Second, think of the plane as a potential deserted island. During that 12-hour flight with my daughter, the plane had no food and eventually ran out of water; you need enough provisions to last a day. This includes a bucket-load of baby wipes (whether or not your baby is in diapers) and a change of clothes for your kid. Both help (trust me) with vomiting at 30,000 feet.

For more, you can read the (now hidden) chapter from Parentonomics on "Travelling."

The tough stuff

Stephen Dubner today grapples with how we tell our kids about bad stuff that is or might happen. Do you tell them the truth or shield them until they are "old enough"? And when are they old enough anyway? Dubner provides useful links to studies and advice about this.

His motivating example was what was happening in Zimbabwe. It reminded me of a conversation with my 9 year old daughter. She came home from school the other day and said, "What are we going to do about Mugabe?" Clearly they had discussed the situation there and she was of the view that he had to go. I responded that I didn't know and this is a difficult situation. She countered, "well, he could be killed. After all, if someone did that they could get away with it because he was the person who set the laws."

A longer discussion about the notion that assassination, murder and what stops it from happening (answer: it shouldn't be just the law) ensued. But it was clear to me how complex this issue was and that it was fundamental to moral development and not just in terms of coping with bad stuff happening in the world. Almost all bits of literature that deals with war and is at the level of a 9 year old is unambiguous on this point. From Star Wars to Harry Potter, it is OK to go after evil people. Her level of comfort with that concept shouldn't be a surprise even if our reaction is not to like to hear it coming from someone so young.

But there is more to this than just dealing with bad events around the world. The harder stuff for a parent is dealing with grief and problems closer to home. In our family, someone close is sick (and worryingly so). This has engendered explicit discussions about death and our approach has been to be very open so that feelings can be discussed and the children can work through it all while at the same time hoping that these things do not happen. The complex thing is dealing with uncertainty. In these matters, adults are really bad at it so how to you help children through?

Our problem is that while we have adopted the expert line on such matters and have been happy to talk about this, when they are around others, if the topic comes up, it is quickly and obviously squashed. Our 7 year old, in particular, wants to discuss these things with as many adults as possible. But instead, he is greeted with denial of the possibility or "you shouldn't talk about that" or what have you. Of course, this is just part of the difficult situation and is, in many ways understandable. However, it is hard to run textbook grief handling tactics when everyone around you isn't on board. I fear it has left him less comforted and more confused. But then again, what else should you be?

Not in the dictionary

So the 9 year old was doing some homework assignment that involved looking up words in the dictionary. She was using a dictionary here at home. For some reason, the following conversation ensued.

9 year old: "let's see spank, sperm, here it is, sprawl."

7 year old: "Sperm is in that dictionary? It isn't in the dictionary at school."

Well, I am glad to see censorship is alive, well and completely ineffective.

Some press

Parentonomics should be in Australian bookstores next week and I'll identify on-line sellers as soon as they become available. But the press has started on it. Here is an article from Melbourne's Herald Sun. We had talked about lots of things but toileting and eating appear to have risen to the top. I also wonder whether "punishment capital" might become a term of art.