Reading, Writing ‘Rithmetic

     Much to the surprise of many, not least me, I started my teaching career in 1976. Surprise it was because I was a truly awful student throughout my own school career. I was now going to be asked to help children put into practice things which I could never do myself! Yes, I know that there is that extremely offensive dictum out there about ‘those who can, do and those who can’t, teach’. I don’t really know how to answer that other than with the following Peter C. Newman story.

The author and journalist, Peter Newman, was at a cocktail party. Amidst the inevitable round of small talk he discovered that he was talking to a famed neurosurgeon.  Inevitably Newman had to reveal how he earned his living. The surgeon said,

“You know, when I retire, I’m going to be a writer.”

There is only one real riposte to a statement like this, Dear Reader, and Mr. Newman duly obliged,

“You know when I retire I am going to be a brain surgeon.”

In my long life, I have worked at many jobs and I have to say that teaching was the hardest of them all. My other jobs demanded that I do one thing at one time. Teaching demanded that I become the desultor leaping from horse to horse while juggling several balls in the air. And now looking back on it, I am a smidge surprised that I got away with it for so long, but it really was the most rewarding of experiences.

Tim Eager, a Grade V teacher at Collingwood School, had a most wonderful poster outside his classroom.  Roughly, it gave ten rules for success in life. The first rule was, “Read” and so were the other nine. Of course, I had always been an avid reader myself so subscribed completely to this point of view. The challenge for any teacher is not how to get the children who enjoy reading to read. Of course it isn’t. They, with directional nudges here and there, virtually take care of themselves. No, the challenge is to reach out to those children who are reluctant readers and somehow turn them on to it. I wish that I had had the magic bullet.

As a child at school, after lunch every day we had a teacher who would read to us from J.R.R. Tolkien’s  “Lord of the Rings”. I loved it. Mr.King would always stop and leave us hanging. We could not wait for the next episode on the next day. Inevitably I, like so many of my peers, was going to read the trilogy on my own.  So along came the Peter Jackson movies of the books and I trekked off to see them, knowing in my heart of hearts that I risked spoiling my childhood experience. The movies and the music were good but they were nothing compared to the books. To me the movie about the book rarely matches the pleasure of the written story. Recently I read ‘Cold Mountain’ by Charles Frazier. This book shall, I believe, become an American classic, the movie, with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, is truly awful. But then, because I loved the book so much, the movie was doomed before I had reached for my first handful of popcorn.

We had graphic novels when I was growing up. A series called ‘Classics Illustrated’ gave us all we needed to know about the wonders of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.  Now we are encouraging students to read graphic novels again. Why not? If Archie comics can prise out the inner reader in every child then I am all for it.  Reading is so important. Whatever works, works. But, Dear Friends, setting aside my teaching hat for a moment and donning that which is personal to me, I will always prefer to picture David Copperfield, Tom Sawyer, the Orcs, the Ents and Bilbo Baggins as characters who are my own imaginings, uninfluenced by a movie depiction or a graphic artist.  Mr. King’s wonderful readings were mine alone as they were just as exclusive for Guy Piercey, Paul Toogood, and Nobby Clarke and every other boy who was spellbound by our teacher’s reading,  our dreamy imaginings were an inner world which nobody could share. So, having been read to as a student, I have a good opinion of audio books although I have to confess I have never listened to one! But next permitted road trip, Dear Reader, listening to the reading of a book will be part of the journey.

 Tim Eager’s poster was cyclopean in outlook in that it catered not for writing and mathematics! Ah, but it did, Dear Reader, it surely did. It seems to me that the one leads to the other, leads to the other. If it is managed properly reading for pleasure, can become reading for meaning and reading for analysis. I am chagrined that there was not available  in my salad years, a graphic explanation that could help me through the mysteries of algebra or, even better, a graphic history that could have helped me to analyse and think about what was important and what is not in the comprehension of that subject. Oh how useful it would have been to understand that there were several better reasons for a Persian king winning a war against the Egyptians than having his army nail cats to their shields because he knew that the cat was sacred to the enemy! I can read but cannot read effectively for analysis. I am in awe of friends, young and old, who can read a newspaper article and quickly give a succinct and perceptive analysis, sum up its main points and draw a reasoned conclusion.

So, I realise, friends, that there are many people who do not read for pleasure but that the practical minded  can and do google and read the 5 steps to fix a leaky pipe, for example. And that is far more important and useful than the thrillers of Robert Ludlum. But I do worry in this age of instant news and, perhaps, instantly forgettable news that humanity is developing a tendency for glossing over events which are too important to be trimmed and skimmed. Forming an opinion after reading a piece of frippery which is as shallow as a bird path is not a healthy way to operate, I suggest.

So to me, Dear Reader, a book is often my best friend when I find myself seeking solitary entertainment. A book to me will always be, as Keats would have it,

“The calm luxuriance of blissful light”

And for that I will be eternally grateful to Mr. King and J.R.R. Tolkien.