"Kids today don't read"... ?!
Mar. 13th, 2019 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielToday I had a rather surreal experience. I had to tell off several students in my class for secretly reading under the table...
... in the Bible.
Let me explain.
Apparently, their Religious Studies teachers handed out Bibles today. These are the students' personal, private, you-get-to-keep-these-for-yourselves Bibles. Most of their school books they have to return at the end of the school year (or in some cases, like their write-in workbooks or the big atlas they're going to use from grade 5 through 10, they have to purchase themselves), but the Bibles are a gift from the Lutheran church, so they neither have to pay for them nor give them back.
This is relevant because it establishes that these books are officially the kids' property. And let me tell you, some of them acted as if they've never owned a book before. They took them out for recess and stood in the schoolyard in little circles, reading in their Bibles. They took them for their lunch break and read while eating until the cafeteria supervisor asked them to please take the books outside. One of them was cradling his Bible like a precious treasure and completely unironically (as far as I could tell) stroking the pages. And during English class (the last two lessons of today), several of the kids tried to read secretly under the table instead of paying attention to How To Construct Questions In English (which is something they should be paying attention to, because word order in questions is, as yet, a complete mystery to most of them).
It was, in all honesty, both touching and a bit worrying how starved some of them seemed for a book, and now I can't help but wonder whether some of these kids genuinely have never owned their own ("grown-up") book before? Did they have... like... picture books as kindergardeners but never got their own children's/teen reader books? Do they only know books as something you get from the library and have to return to the library, or worse, did they not touch any books that weren't textbooks in years? Because that's how some of them behaved. And we all know that the Bible isn't the most accessible of books, even if the kids received a "modern" translation.
When I threatened that if I caught one more kid secretly reading in the Bible, they would have to read English Bible texts, their response was actually "Ooooh yes please!"? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE KIDS? (I think what gets me is that nearly half the class is acting like that!)
In the short term, this means two things: a) I'm going to ask the kids if they'd prefer to receive (English >:D) books rather than cake for winning the "house cup". (As part of my classroom management, I've sorted my 5th graders into Hogwarts houses and grant - or dock! - points off their houses, and at the end of each month, the winner house gets cupcakes. But if they're so starved for literature, I'll definitely look into cheap-ish English books for beginners! Comic books, maybe?), and b) I will definitely have to push the idea of a "book club" or library for lunch break!
Kids these days don't read? Well of course they don't, if they don't get books! Poor kids. My heart is honestly aching for them. (Even if they drove me batty today! The last two lessons of the day are always tough.)
... in the Bible.
Let me explain.
Apparently, their Religious Studies teachers handed out Bibles today. These are the students' personal, private, you-get-to-keep-these-for-yourselves Bibles. Most of their school books they have to return at the end of the school year (or in some cases, like their write-in workbooks or the big atlas they're going to use from grade 5 through 10, they have to purchase themselves), but the Bibles are a gift from the Lutheran church, so they neither have to pay for them nor give them back.
This is relevant because it establishes that these books are officially the kids' property. And let me tell you, some of them acted as if they've never owned a book before. They took them out for recess and stood in the schoolyard in little circles, reading in their Bibles. They took them for their lunch break and read while eating until the cafeteria supervisor asked them to please take the books outside. One of them was cradling his Bible like a precious treasure and completely unironically (as far as I could tell) stroking the pages. And during English class (the last two lessons of today), several of the kids tried to read secretly under the table instead of paying attention to How To Construct Questions In English (which is something they should be paying attention to, because word order in questions is, as yet, a complete mystery to most of them).
It was, in all honesty, both touching and a bit worrying how starved some of them seemed for a book, and now I can't help but wonder whether some of these kids genuinely have never owned their own ("grown-up") book before? Did they have... like... picture books as kindergardeners but never got their own children's/teen reader books? Do they only know books as something you get from the library and have to return to the library, or worse, did they not touch any books that weren't textbooks in years? Because that's how some of them behaved. And we all know that the Bible isn't the most accessible of books, even if the kids received a "modern" translation.
When I threatened that if I caught one more kid secretly reading in the Bible, they would have to read English Bible texts, their response was actually "Ooooh yes please!"? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE KIDS? (I think what gets me is that nearly half the class is acting like that!)
In the short term, this means two things: a) I'm going to ask the kids if they'd prefer to receive (English >:D) books rather than cake for winning the "house cup". (As part of my classroom management, I've sorted my 5th graders into Hogwarts houses and grant - or dock! - points off their houses, and at the end of each month, the winner house gets cupcakes. But if they're so starved for literature, I'll definitely look into cheap-ish English books for beginners! Comic books, maybe?), and b) I will definitely have to push the idea of a "book club" or library for lunch break!
Kids these days don't read? Well of course they don't, if they don't get books! Poor kids. My heart is honestly aching for them. (Even if they drove me batty today! The last two lessons of the day are always tough.)
