What Ever Happened to Reading and Writing?

My son just turned two and is struggling with his speech. It's not something we're concerned about too much yet. He sees a speech therapist once a week and we've been diligent in following the advice of his therapist and coaching him along in his development. He's trying. He wants to speak. He articulates things in some alien language that in his head is probably Dickensian. He rattles off series of Bs and Ws and Ds as if he had invented his own dialect, and who knows, maybe it makes more sense than English, but we all know it won't fly in the long run.

My son's name is Mathias. We call him Matty. Between his second birthday early in December and Christmas, Matty has accumulated enough children's toys and technology to rival a NASA control panel. Outside of his cars, which aptly satisfy his desire to be around anything that spins, most of his new toys come with a series of buttons and controls that loom daunting to his 36-year old father. Although advertised as age appropriate toys for the most part designed to educate, I wonder what a series of buttons that make a series of noises really does to help him develop language and math skills.

It got me to thinking about a high school scholarship committee I sit on. The scholarship is strictly academic and is awarded for a student's senior year in the school, so there is a solid resume of work to look over when assessing an applicant. It's the essays though, that leave me cringing. Some of these kids are the cream of the crop in their class, and their ability to creatively form a sentence in the English language rivals my culinary skills. If I have all the ingredients in front of me and strict instructions, I may be able to make something edible. But if I'm forced to wing it, you'd probably end up licking the roof of your mouth for something with actual taste, or you'd more than likely spend part of your next 24 hours in a bathroom. The sentences in these essays were indeed as bland as the English language offers, and some of the simple tense and agreement problems made me want to upchuck in the closest bathroom.

In an age when the Internet and all its foibles, text messaging, video games and brain-siphoning phone applications provide unending entertainment, is it any wonder that the common student doesn't have an interest in using their imagination to self-produce an experience?

In an age where NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND leaves children even further behind, and slows down students who may be able to excel if they weren't being bored to death waiting for teachers to commit time to students who need it more, is it any wonder that they'll turn their interests to other things besides academia?

It is obvious that the lack of good teachers in this country is staggering, and it is even more obvious that the good ones (and there are many) are severely underpaid. But from my limited view of the educational system, it's become obvious to me that by having the best in technology at their fingertips, teachers may be ill-equipped to encourage kids to use their minds. You can teach all the sentence diagramming and grammar tools that you want, but practice makes perfect, and these students practice by regurgitating text acronyms to each other four hundred times a day. There are many out there afraid that Spanish is taking over as the national language (and I'll admit that I'm not too keen on Dora and Diego when my son says three words in English), but what I'm more afraid of is technology as the national language. When I meet someone 25 years or younger that can speak in complete sentences and articulate themselves without an LMAO or beginning and ending a sentence with "yo" I want to embrace them.

Given my love of books and the written word, we were lucky enough to have a baby shower where everyone brought one of their favorite children's books. When Matty was an infant, we enjoyed sitting next to his crib, or rocking him to sleep with Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak, or A.A. Milne and the Rey's curious monkey. But as he's gotten older, and brings me a book to read, it's no longer the words or the story, or the sound of my voice that interests him. This is disconcerting considering he now at leasts comprehends most of the words. What turns him on now are the buttons on the side of the book that tell us how Mickey Mouse's airplane sounds, or the hammer used by Thomas the Train's friends to fix a railroad track, along with the small toy hammer that comes with the book he can use to bang a button to make a sound. I understand that's it's all a part of learning the world, but as a parent I wonder if I'm steering him down the right path toward becoming someone that can put forth a paper down the line with some thought in it, or carry on a conversation intelligently.

What I'm encouraged by is my desire to be involved, to monitor when he gets a cellphone years down the line, to ensure that the Wii in our house that hasn't been turned on in two years stays off for at least 23 hours a day, to be saavy enough on a computer to make sure his future Facebook (or whatever's next) account is monitored daily. To appreciate advances in our world, we have to know how we got to where we are, and when it comes to my son, my best plan is to stay steadfast in trying to help his future educators by reinforcing the tools they supply to him, and doing my best to encourage him to think creatively for himself.