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Many children are obsessed with having magic powers. My daughter Hazel pretends she’s powerful like a character in Naruto or Avatar. Hazel told me last year in the beginning of the school year that she wanted to be powerful. She was mostly playing, but I took the opportunity to sit her down and ask her if she wanted real power in real life, that’s not pretend. She emphatically said yes. So I told her that knowledge is power. I asked her if she knew what knowledge was. She shook her head no. I told her it was knowing things, and that she needed to know as many things as possible, and that she needed to think about things deeply, otherwise people would be able to trick her into doing things she didn’t want to do. Her eyes were big and wide when she asked, “How do you get knowledge?” The answer was, you start by learning how to read and then it’s by learning as much as you can. After that she was more motivated to take the risk of reading on her own. This strategy also worked on her best friend Minhtri, an ELL boy, who is also a Naruto fan. He can now read better than many of the students who have English as a first language. It helps, of course, that he has support from his parents to learn how to read English, but it doesn’t change the marked improvement I noticed in his reading ability after explaining that knowledge is power and how to obtain said knowledge.
I believe that we are still having a literacy power struggle. The basal readers kids are required to read are uninteresting, and in my opinion are worse than Dick and Jane books. There’s no substance to them. They seem to discourage reading. Insisting that children read thirty minutes a day leads many parents who are not avid readers to tell their children they have to read for thirty minutes because their teacher or principal said so. Such tactics demotivate reading. And the less you read, the less good you will be at It, and as a result the less knowledgeable you will be.
The math curriculum is another problem area in this. It is only recently that it is shifting to something more than arbitrary rules and rote memorization. Math is a dreaded subject for most students, and Hazel had already developed a bit of math anxiety. She didn’t want to do any math outside of school. So I asked her, do you know what math is? She said no. I told her it was simply playing with puzzles and patterns using numbers (and shapes too). Her entire view on math changed and she does math for fun now. Sometimes we do it together. This has aided in her ability to think more thoughtfully on things. Mathematics is a precursor to critical thinking skills since you need to understand the fundamentals of statistics, as well as proper procedures in conducting valid studies so that when you read an article about some new study you’ll be able to determine whether or not the study is valid. If you have little to no understanding of what the numbers mean or how those conducting the study came to their conclusion then you will be easily duped by bad science and propaganda.
Public schools generally do not teach children how to become critical thinkers. In most classrooms the teachers have a, do as I say or else, kind of atmosphere and as such do not encourage children to learn how to effectively argue with her if they disagree with her. I teach Hazel how to argue with me. She does not get anything when she fusses, whines or pitches a fit in any way, but she often gets her way when she can present her argument logically and calmly. For example, if she asks me to let her watch an episode of Avatar and I say not right now, she will ask a clarifying question, such as later today? This is good, because it removes false assumptions. I encourage this kind of behavior. If I say, later today, she will look at the time and if it’s nigh onto evening she’ll then say, but Mom, you’re going to be making dinner soon and after dinner we have to clean up and then it’s bed time, I won’t have time to watch it later. I had just told her she could watch it later today, but her argument is reasonable and sound and delivered calmly. As such, she gets to watch Avatar sooner rather than later. However, if she pulls the same argument but has a conniption fit instead she doesn’t get anything. Of course, she doesn’t always do this perfectly. After all, she is only six years old, but it has dramatically increased her reasoning capabilities and has thus aided her at school, church, and in her social life.
When you are a child, building the foundation for knowledge, and thus power, is much simpler. When you are an adult it is harder to learn how to think critically. You end up challenging preconceived notions which can be a scary thing, and it stretches your brain in ways you are not used to. Many adults start the process but do not finish the process of becoming a critical thinker. I believe that those in politics and other positions of power prefer it that way. After all, the less knowledge you have the more easily manipulated you are and the more susceptible you are to various propaganda. It also means that even if you know in your gut that you right about something but you don’t know how to logically back it up and the opposing position does, then you are on the losing side of the battle.
I work hard to foster the quest for knowledge and reasoning capabilities in children I have influence over. I believe that doing so is vital to their future. I haven’t heard any complaints yet!
Botelho, M.J., & Rudman, M.K. (2009). Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature. Mirrors, Windows, and Doors. Routledge.
Recently:
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