catapult magazine

catapult magazine
 

discussion

Growing and Maturing as a Reader

Default

Organic_Warrior
Jul 02 2009
03:38 pm

Fantastic dialoge here. I am new to this site, and am quite excited to be a part of such open and intelligent reparte.

Norbert, great topic here.
I agree with Eddie’s criticism of the book report as an assignment that is of little educational value. John Holt is one of my favourite educational philosophers, and I think he would agree that book reports are designed to meet the administrative requirements of a government created and designed system which requires students to follow rules as they produce products that can be evaluated/graded. Is this learning? Perhaps. Is this giving life to the heart and spirit of the learner, who’s God given curiousity and apprecation for knowledge was most likely crushed a few months into the 3rd grade? I would say no. Schools cannot take the risk of allowing a human to explore literature freely. What if they don’t produce a product that can be graded? Aghast! I would go as far as to say that the exploration of literature in school is not exploration at all! Exploration by my definition is diminished by structure, and in some cases destroyed by structure.

On a different note,
Anyone read “The Omnivore’s Dilema”? I’ve heard some good things about it. Is it worth reading?