Can’t write much this week—Sue and I are taking a little long-overdue holiday away from home and if she catches me writing here, well . . .

But I did want to highlight a clever post Beth made last week. She writes, “Here's an idea: have kids do reports on video games every day in school for years; keep logs on them and take them apart, diagram their dialogue structure, make everyone in the class work at the exact same pace (too slow or too fast) and generally take all the 'fun' out of the games.

You might find the kids turn to books for enjoyment instead of those 'boring' (frustrating) computer games!”

Whether or not it’s possible to ruin video games for kids in this way, I think we can all recognize that books do sometimes die an ignominious death in our nation’s classrooms.
And while they certainly don’t always get ruined in school—there are a lot of great teachers making books exciting for kids and turning them into readers—it does happen. It happened to me back when I was a student, and it’s happening to thousands of kids every single day.
And it’s exactly why, as parents, we can’t just assume that our kids are going to learn a love of books in school, and why we have to undertake this particular mission ourselves.
Fortunately, it’s a rewarding one . . . and one that’s very, very do-able.
More soon,
JP

Also posted on James' Parenting Blog