Why Doesn't The Child Want To Read? - Society

Modern children grow up on cartoons and at best grow up to cinema. And then, predictably, they cannot master the reading of War and Peace. It is like teaching a child arithmetic in pictures with two apples and three plums, and then demanding that he, without mastering the multiplication table, take integrals

For many parents, this is an unpleasant surprise: their child, who seems to have learned to read, resolutely does not want to do this. An article by Lyubov Makarina is about why this is happening and how to change it.

How the "knowledge screen" is formed

The French sociologist Abraham Mohl long ago introduced the concept of the "screen of knowledge." The knowledge that we learn is projected onto it.

Ideally, this "screen" resembles a fabric made from transverse threads. As we study, these threads become more and more. And gradually an ordered structure is formed, in which each new piece of information falls into a complex system of interconnections. But the tissue-like system of the "knowledge screen" of an educated adult is very different from what is done in the head of a small child.

See also: Why did Harry Potter give children back the desire to read? 5 reading rules

The child in the knowledge of the world goes, according to Mole, "from random to random." And that's okay. He assimilates knowledge as needed: from TV, from cartoons, from communication with parents and other children.

What the child knows is the result of constant exposure to random information

Only when this information is accumulated enough (just in time for school - plus or minus), the structure begins to be seen. And before that, the connections between pieces of information are very simple and random: by the time of assimilation, by association. They touch, but this is not a structure, and instead of logical connections, there is a cohesion force, like felt.

By the time a child should be able to read, his knowledge - fragmentary, unsystematic - is just felt. Do not worry, this, again, is a natural process, and it should be so. (Moth, however, wrote about the fact that modern adults, alas, often have felt in their heads, but that's another topic.)

Association or logic?

The trouble is that modern education - both higher, and school, and even preschool - is more and more focused not on "fabric", but on "felt", on disordered, on associative.

If you force a child to haphazardly memorize disparate rules, he will remember them. And he can even safely rattle off the exam. But he will not learn, because he will not see in the set of fragments of internal logic

But he perfectly learns something else - that you need to perform the right actions in the right order in order to get the result. A "well-trained" child - a kindergartner, a junior schoolchild - already knows how to mobilize for short-term memorization, a "poorly trained" - no. But often that's the difference.

Is it worth reading under a stick?

So, the child at the very least learned to read - at school or even before school. And suddenly it turns out that he can read, but for some reason does not want to. Laziness? Let him read from under the stick, then get used to it and love? No, not only and not so much laziness.

"We are chita-a-ali"! - parents are indignant. Of course, we read, and our parents read, and grandfathers. But fifty years ago, the TV was not in every home.

A hundred years ago, the set of information a child needed and vocabulary differed slightly from the parent's. Moreover, the volume of information about the world did not grow so quickly.

For a long time, books were, if not the only, then the main intellectual entertainment

The child who did not know how to read was entertained with the same books - or they retold what they read in their own words, or even on the go, composing fairy tales "based on". In short, the child was constantly surrounded by words, words, words - and they hardly changed.

And a modern child, having mastered the "reading" skill, does not quite understand what to do with it. As in a joke: I guessed all the letters, but could not name the word. He doesn't know the words!

No, technically, his vocabulary is quite large. He can correctly answer what is drawn in the pictures (and the "psychologist" will nod graciously: they say, he is ready for school). He knows how a multicooker differs from a smartphone. But for reading what we grew up on, this is too little.

What cartoons don't teach

Reading in the life of a modern child is becoming less and less. The average mother would rather give her child a cartoon than read him a book.

Cartoons intended for children really often teach precisely friendship, kindness, mutual assistance, and so on. They do not teach one thing - vocabulary, which is a little more complicated than everyday one

And even those parents who proudly tell that they only play the best cartoons for their children (“Soviet, not some kind of ones!”) Do not quite understand what the problem might be. What is the difference, in fact, how the child gets acquainted with the wandering plot "beauty and the beast"? From the point of view of the plot - absolutely nothing. From the point of view of moral education - too (at the level of "being merciful to be better than cruel", and the other is still unattainable).

Riddles of the "Scarlet Flower"

Let's do a little experiment. We include the classic Soviet "Scarlet Flower", made not by freelancers on their knees, but by people who knew a lot about how and what to do for children.

“You are my dear daughters, my dear daughters, my ship leaves in the morning for foreign lands, for overseas countries,” says the merchant. Which, we note, is not called a "merchant" anywhere! Stepan Emelyanych - that's all.

Nika, a third-grader, who knew and loved the cartoon very well, frowned and put down the book she needed to read for the lesson. To the question of what happened ("After all, you like it so much!"), Hesitated, she replied: it is not clear.

Of course, it's not clear. Comprehension and perception of the text are directly related. You recognized the letters, put the letters into a word - but this is not enough, you must link the word with the image that exists in your head. And it, rogue, does not fit

And when a child who has received the task to read Aksakov's fairy tale at school sees the word "merchant", it does not pull the bearded, burly Stepan Yemelyanych from the cartoon. This is a new, incomprehensible piece of information. It has already been said above about fragmentary knowledge.

If the puzzle doesn't add up

But this is not the problem - the problem is that there are not enough fragments.

If a child has not received this or that knowledge with a waterfall of information that constantly falls on him, then this knowledge has nowhere to come from. It will not arise by itself in his head and will not be deduced by the deductive method

And if for a child (and then for a teenager) most of the fragments are Chinese letters, only the function of “storytelling” remains of the book, and it is not surprising that a TV is more convenient, where the story is also shown.

Yes, the cartoon "The Scarlet Flower" is amazing - but it was made for those who read or will certainly read a fairy tale. It is intended to complement the book, not replace it. At the same time, it still contains an incredibly large amount of text - compared to modern cartoons.

Cinematography and animation are increasingly using non-textual means of conveying information. Even the best examples say little

Of course, this is not about "Zootopia" and not about other great things designed for older children.

Puzzles for thoughtful children

Children need to be explained everything. Even an incredibly simple text needs to be explained! And the most offensive thing is that it is thoughtful children who stop reading. It is really important for them to understand what they are reading, and not to get rid of their mother or teacher - "Yes, I read, I read!" - and not rattle off the "reading technique", having received your "five".

On the one hand, yes, for the perception of the plot of the same "The Scarlet Flower" it is not very important whether the merchant is there, the reaper or the gambler is on the pipe. On the other hand, there are no rules of the game, for example, "The Scarlet Flower" does not imply.

Nobody warns a child that the text from the school curriculum will suddenly become full of something … And for many children, full-fledged perception is very important

In itself, this is neither good nor bad - neither the fact that the dominant way of presenting information is changing, nor that the perception of a modern child is "sharpened" differently.

The key to academic success

The school curriculum, school and university educational and methodological literature - all this implies, first of all, reading. It should also be a tool, a key to other academic disciplines.

Too many modern children in elementary school do not have time at all because they are stupid and dull, they just spend all their energy just reading the assignment

Yes, if there are few unfamiliar words, you can safely skip them or restore them from the context. But if you stumble on every line - what a pleasure there is, what a benefit, to get rid of and forget.

The child does not delve into the meaning - the process is too tedious for him, he reads for the sake of reading. Unaccustomed to reading for himself, he will never read just because at school it was suddenly needed for business.

We develop the psyche gradually

It is important that in the book that we offer the child, the unfamiliar, the unknown appears gradually

And long before he starts reading himself, instead of a cartoon. And it is very important not just to keep a mouthful of the text, nodding, but to read with the child.

The books on which we were raised have largely lost their relevance for modern children. But not at all because they are outdated in content, but because it is already a different language. Does it need to remain relevant? Maybe yes. And it is a pity for "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", and it is dangerous when the role of speech development, its influence on the development of the psyche as a whole, is underestimated.

The main recommendation is one: choose books carefully, read to the child, read with the child. What you read with him, paying attention to every little thing, encouraging him to ask questions, will become his property

Read also:

• Developing activities for active children
• 6 reasons a child cheats
• Tolerant Potter. Are J. K. Rowling's books harmful to children?
• The page is the door. Why do people read books
• A tale told for the night. How to instill in your child a love of reading