In which I decry my child's privilege
Baz is an excellent reader. And I'm very proud of that.
I, too, was an excellent reader once I engaged in it. So I have a pretty good idea what it looks like from inside his head. Reading is enjoyable for him, he chooses to do it, he loses time, he is engaged in the story, he has excellent comprehension. He's going to be ok.
Yesterday, he came home with three bags of prizes from school, for being the best reader in kindergarten - 75 kids or so. He got all kinds of awesome toys.
I think this is totally the wrong message. We reward the people who have it easy? Whose brains and background and education already make them successes? We don't reward the kid who is 'only' reading at first-grade level, even though she's an English Language Learner? We don't pay tribute to the hours of sweat and failure she is putting into something my kid finds easy?
This feels WRONG to me. It makes me sad. I'm happy that Baz is happy, but I think that all of us have been that other kid sometimes. When you watch someone who can run a mile without thinking about it, and you think, "That's for the birds. I'm never doing that. Why bother? What a stupid thing. And SHE gets a prize for it? She didn't even SWEAT. Screw this."
I don't want kids to think that about reading. Or about anything. I don't want them to feel that talent and luck and yes, privilege will always trump hard work. Partially because the world doesn't work that way, and partially because it does.
I think that most of us in this rarefied internetty environment have also had the flipside of this. After years of effortlessly acing vocabulary tests and spelling tests, after a couple decades of your teachers and professors telling you that you are the brightest, most talented, most awesomesauce student ever, the one who lingers in their memory, it's a RUDE FUCKING AWAKENING to have to do and learn things that are hard. That you suck at. That other people are good at, and you're not. It's kind of shattering to write a good paper and get a C, or a D. It's even embarrassing and makes you want to walk away when other people are better at plastic guitar or knit through the back loop or whatever else it is. Either way, I don't know that children are served by celebrating their talents instead of their work. The high school award I may cherish most is my "Most Improved" trophy from volleyball. The one I care least about is my fourth-in-state plaque in Business Law, because it was a standardized test I happened to take between speech competitions, and well, I'm good at those tests.
The King County Library system has a summer reading program. When I was a kid, I hated reading programs because they penalized people who read complicated books and rewarded people who read many easy books. But this one is smart, and does not reward anyone unfairly. It's based entirely on minutes spent reading. It doesn't matter if it takes you if it takes all week to finish a book, if you are reading at 1 word a minute, whatever. You are rewarded for the WORK you have done. A slow but dedicated reader could totally earn more reward than a facile but tv-loving reader. And the more you practice, the better you get, no matter what level you start at.
Baz is excited about the program, and I am, too. I like that his effort is more important than his good fortune. Effort will do more for him in the long run.
I, too, was an excellent reader once I engaged in it. So I have a pretty good idea what it looks like from inside his head. Reading is enjoyable for him, he chooses to do it, he loses time, he is engaged in the story, he has excellent comprehension. He's going to be ok.
Yesterday, he came home with three bags of prizes from school, for being the best reader in kindergarten - 75 kids or so. He got all kinds of awesome toys.
I think this is totally the wrong message. We reward the people who have it easy? Whose brains and background and education already make them successes? We don't reward the kid who is 'only' reading at first-grade level, even though she's an English Language Learner? We don't pay tribute to the hours of sweat and failure she is putting into something my kid finds easy?
This feels WRONG to me. It makes me sad. I'm happy that Baz is happy, but I think that all of us have been that other kid sometimes. When you watch someone who can run a mile without thinking about it, and you think, "That's for the birds. I'm never doing that. Why bother? What a stupid thing. And SHE gets a prize for it? She didn't even SWEAT. Screw this."
I don't want kids to think that about reading. Or about anything. I don't want them to feel that talent and luck and yes, privilege will always trump hard work. Partially because the world doesn't work that way, and partially because it does.
I think that most of us in this rarefied internetty environment have also had the flipside of this. After years of effortlessly acing vocabulary tests and spelling tests, after a couple decades of your teachers and professors telling you that you are the brightest, most talented, most awesomesauce student ever, the one who lingers in their memory, it's a RUDE FUCKING AWAKENING to have to do and learn things that are hard. That you suck at. That other people are good at, and you're not. It's kind of shattering to write a good paper and get a C, or a D. It's even embarrassing and makes you want to walk away when other people are better at plastic guitar or knit through the back loop or whatever else it is. Either way, I don't know that children are served by celebrating their talents instead of their work. The high school award I may cherish most is my "Most Improved" trophy from volleyball. The one I care least about is my fourth-in-state plaque in Business Law, because it was a standardized test I happened to take between speech competitions, and well, I'm good at those tests.
The King County Library system has a summer reading program. When I was a kid, I hated reading programs because they penalized people who read complicated books and rewarded people who read many easy books. But this one is smart, and does not reward anyone unfairly. It's based entirely on minutes spent reading. It doesn't matter if it takes you if it takes all week to finish a book, if you are reading at 1 word a minute, whatever. You are rewarded for the WORK you have done. A slow but dedicated reader could totally earn more reward than a facile but tv-loving reader. And the more you practice, the better you get, no matter what level you start at.
Baz is excited about the program, and I am, too. I like that his effort is more important than his good fortune. Effort will do more for him in the long run.