Why Read, Pages 1-21
Forgive the boring title. We are reading Why Read? by Mark Emundson for one of my college English classes. Basically this book discusses why reading is important and how he thinks education should be different. As an education major/someone who has been in school at least once, his thoughts on education are interesting to me. Bear with me, I think this post is worth thinking about.
Education has become entertainment 24/7. Many students hate teachers who can't joke around and don't make their subject fun. While I personally think it's a good thing for a teacher to be enthusiastic and connect with their students, I do realize this entertainment issue is actually a problem. A student can't go into a class and expect their teachers to do backflips, crack jokes, and give them puppies. School is for learning. Sometimes a lesson a teacher has to teach is not going to be fun. Does that make the teacher a bad one? Or the lesson not worth learning? Just because I didn't think my biology class was fun doesn't mean what I learned wasn't important.
He also had some interesting points about television. I love television more than the average bear, but I think his criticism of it was spot on. TV makes enthusiasm look silly. Why participate when you can just watch? We love to watch things. Think about when you were little. Do you remember when everyone was super enthusiastic about volunteering for things in school? By the time you got to middle school and high school, it became lame to be the one to raise your hand in class. What happened?
For me, I relate this lack of enthusiasm to television. I started watching more things on TV as I got older. Let's assume my classmates did, too. By watching TV, we figured just watching other things was better too. We'd rather get lost in other people's lives than live our own. Of course, I'm still going to continue to watch my shows. Don't get me wrong. Perhaps I'll try to make a more conscious effort to read more, though.
Finally, the last thing I found interesting was that people use education to get rich, not for enrichment. SO TRUE. For some. While people may want a certain lifestyle in the future and need a certain amount of money to do it, I feel that education should challenge your beliefs as well. Thank goodness for liberal education! I'm taking classes about things I hate, but you know what? It's good I'm learning about them. When am I going to use chemistry as an English teacher? Never! But now I know why chemists are important and maybe understand why some things work the way they do. If my brain absorbed anything.
I also think we should be challenged in our education - beliefs-wise. Sure, maybe I think green is the best color in the world and everyone should like green but what about all the people that like blue? I should have to think about that. I should be courteous to them and perhaps think about blue being an okay color. I can still like green the most, but I can accept blue. That is obviously an over simplified example of challenging beliefs. I am trying to avoid political/religious/whatever discussions. For now.
...the end.