2 posts tagged “literacy interview”
Today, we celebrated Sophia's three-year baptismal birthday. It's a milestone at our church, and like all the other three-year olds, Sophie received her big girl Bible. This particular text has been a problem for me. For example, I became tongue-tied trying to explain to a younger Josh why I didn't like for Eve to be called "Adam's special helper." At least in Sophie's revised edition, Eve has become Adam's "friend," but she's still the originator of sin.
I've wondered for a long time why I let my children have--and love--this particular edition of the Bible. To be honest, I'm a fair-weather Christian. I don't read the parts I don't like. (The parts I don't like are the ones inconsistent with what I consider to be the greater truth of the New Testament.) Anyway, I let Sophie have this Bible. Why did I do that if I disagree with its cartoonish optimism and down-right silly portrayal of women?
Because some day she will learn to read, and she'll be struggling in a high school English class as she tries to read Faulkner or Joyce or any other great Modernist. She'll read Jonathan Edwards, and Beowulf. She'll read the Inferno. Appreciating just about any artful Western text (visual or word-based) she encounters could rely on prior knowledge of these Bible stories. I want her to have a fully complicated cultural literacy.
I suppose it will be up to her someday whether or not to believe what she reads, and ultimately to make that decision I think she needs to own and read her Beginner's Bible.
I've wondered for a long time why I let my children have--and love--this particular edition of the Bible. To be honest, I'm a fair-weather Christian. I don't read the parts I don't like. (The parts I don't like are the ones inconsistent with what I consider to be the greater truth of the New Testament.) Anyway, I let Sophie have this Bible. Why did I do that if I disagree with its cartoonish optimism and down-right silly portrayal of women?
Because some day she will learn to read, and she'll be struggling in a high school English class as she tries to read Faulkner or Joyce or any other great Modernist. She'll read Jonathan Edwards, and Beowulf. She'll read the Inferno. Appreciating just about any artful Western text (visual or word-based) she encounters could rely on prior knowledge of these Bible stories. I want her to have a fully complicated cultural literacy.
I suppose it will be up to her someday whether or not to believe what she reads, and ultimately to make that decision I think she needs to own and read her Beginner's Bible.
I was lucky enough to get to spend the day in Boston with my friend Denell and her husband Erik before I traveled to New York for my College Board advisory committee meeting. I asked and asked them to allow me to interview them about their literacy so that I could add their voices to my sabbatical studies, but they somehow managed to avoid it. They were too shy to talk about their reading and writing lives (they are both professors), but not embarrassed to pose for a photo on a donkey in front of Boston's Old City Hall?
Fortunately, my good friend Marsha bussed up from Philly to spend the afternoon with me in NYC, and she has fewer boundaries:). After walking around the city, really something exhausting like 200 blocks, she collapsed in my hotel room to answer my questions. Even exhausted, she's amazingly insightful. I love that Marsha (which does not imply that I don't love Erik and Denell because they wouldn't be videotaped--they did lead me to crabcakes and yummy sweet potato fries).
Here's what she had to say:
Fortunately, my good friend Marsha bussed up from Philly to spend the afternoon with me in NYC, and she has fewer boundaries:). After walking around the city, really something exhausting like 200 blocks, she collapsed in my hotel room to answer my questions. Even exhausted, she's amazingly insightful. I love that Marsha (which does not imply that I don't love Erik and Denell because they wouldn't be videotaped--they did lead me to crabcakes and yummy sweet potato fries).
Here's what she had to say:
