About reading

Catherine Rampell, writing in The Washington Post :

Amid debates about how children will process texts invoking racism or sexual identity, a much more basic question plagues our educational system: whether children can process texts, period.

And:

It is disheartening that the culture wars have come for not just lesson plans but librarians, too. Librarians are instrumental in promoting literacy. They guide students toward texts that will absorb and engage them. They nudge kids toward books, films, periodicals and online resources that will answer burning, sometimes embarrassing questions.

Perhaps most important, they teach children how to critically evaluate the credibility of their sources — not only the tomes on library shelves but also whatever they might find in the Wild West of TikTok and Reddit, where protective parents are less able to gate-keep.

Call me old-school, but maybe we should devote less energy to limiting what kids are reading and more to whether they can read at all.

Related reading
A few OCA Sold a Story posts