the parent of a child who is failing English...read?

[Bled Welder]

Any ideas on what the explosive growth if autistics is all about?
I always feel somewhat sorry for otherwise great people who have decided to breed.  Talk about a waste of time!  By which I mean having to take care of them.  Get them to do this, do that.  Do this for them, do that for them.  It's my understanding that this is a daily thing.  Ick.  My point being, how great, what an absolute treasure those iPad things are for the children, especially like in public places!  Just get a mildly brain-working program and let them at it.  Feed them and then forget about them.  Talk about what a tragedy shootings are in Florida, and how heroic we are raising consciousness about it.
But yes, that would be a problem, parents who are such scholars that they can't be bothered to go outside and play ever, that's almost revoltingly sad.  But I'll presume you're in NYc, you were scoping men in Central Park with snakes, right?  Must be quite a cunnundrum being a decent playful parent in Manhattan.
I'd say that of all evil things a child could grow into, it would be a member of the United States Armed Forces.  Of course I just slammed my eighth whiskey of the day--

> Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:46:34 -0400
> Subject: the parent of a child who is failing English...read?
> From: alicewellintown at gmail.com
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> 
> A dear friend, a scholar with young sons, confided that she could not
> get her boys to read for more than a few minutes. She feared that
> pushing the boys to read would cause them to read even less. I gave
> advice, but I knew that hooking kids on reading is a trial and error
> affair and that, like most else we do in education, the only rule that
> matters is, never give up on a child. A solid platitude if you need
> inspiration or are nearing burn-out or exhaustion, but not very
> helpful. Of course you won't give up on your reluctant reader. So how
> about some practical solutions? Well, cutting back on rich media use,
> like TV, Video games, computer use and so on may help, or may not help
> at all. In fact, some reluctant readers do quite a bit of reading when
> playing a game or when figuring out how to install a new game or how
> to use the cheat codes. Read yourself. Yes, this old standard seems
> obvious enough. But some kids resent and hate books because parents
> have their noses stuck in them and kids want the parent to move out of
> the book and into the back yard where a ball or the grass is calling.
> What you read and when may count for something. Maybe read something a
> kid can have fun with and see if this works. There is, as Dewey sez,
> "No educational Value in the Abstract." What works today may fail
> tomorrow. What works wonders with one child will be counterproductive
> with another. And so, we can never give up, but must be pragmatic and
> persevere. And one more thing, maybe your child won't be a big reader.
> Maybe she will decide to join the army and go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
> Is this such a bad thing in the end? Well, I've come to live with it
> and so can you.
> 
> 
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/why-teens-should-read-adult-fiction-and-vice-versa/article2371260/
 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120325/75668135/attachment.html>