Sweet Literary Jeebus...
I saw this story on grammar_whores
My boyfriend's 7-year-old daughter stood proudly in front of the family this evening and read aloud her reading homework, which was a children's novel given to her by her teacher. She gets tongue-tied with her words sometimes when she reads aloud, so every so often I correct her and ask her to stop, slow down and re-read.
She was getting frustrated with how often she was getting corrected and I wan't understanding why she was doing so poorly with this book -- until I asked her to show me what she was reading. I looked at the passage she was struggling with and with a flash of surprised outrage, I realized that the problem was not her reading, but the book itself.
A few sentences from the book:
I smiled very sneaky.
I quick closed my eyes.
I quick grabbed the napkin.
I do not know him that good.
His nose was running very much.
I look at Herb's plate. He had three more foods to go.
Mrs. Gutzman looked funny at me.
I quick closed my eyes? I did not know him that good? He had three more foods? Are you freaking kidding me? And this is only from two out of ten chapters. This thing reads as though it was written by someone with a poor grasp of the english language and they're using it as teaching material?
All this time, I thought her poor manner of speech was due to being around the kids at her daycare, but now I see that she is being taught this crap at her school!
What really boils me is that this is not a public school. It's a private school with a long waiting list. We are paying for this.
I want to talk to her teacher about having my little girl absorb this crap into her mind but my boyfriend thinks I'm overreacting and that I should be happy she's reading at all. I'm overjoyed that she's reading but I can find her better books to feed her mind with than this piece of garbage. I don't think it's overreacting to be upset that the school we pay well over a grand a month for is teaching my little girl to sound like an uneducated moron.
For the curious, the book is called Junie B., First Grader: Boss of Lunch by Barbara Park. Way to fail, Scholastic.
I did a little poking around after reading that post and I found that, the author was trying to simulate the speech of a first grader... Yes folks, that's right. The author wrote a book for FIRST GRADERS and expected them to grasp the concept of vernacular enough to realize that Junie B's speech isn't an example of good English. I'm sorry, but I really can't see trying to explain that to a six year old.
What's next? "Portrait of the Artist as a Toddler"? Perhaps, "Animal Farm Junior"? Wait... Perhaps we should save the stream of consciousness and hip-deep, communist allegory for the next nine week period, since, You know, you really should at least try to space out explaining literary tropes that FAR above a first grader's intellectual pay grade. Let's just make sure we give the kids a few more books in the vernacular and assure that their basic grammar skills are fucked from the outset...
My boyfriend's 7-year-old daughter stood proudly in front of the family this evening and read aloud her reading homework, which was a children's novel given to her by her teacher. She gets tongue-tied with her words sometimes when she reads aloud, so every so often I correct her and ask her to stop, slow down and re-read.
She was getting frustrated with how often she was getting corrected and I wan't understanding why she was doing so poorly with this book -- until I asked her to show me what she was reading. I looked at the passage she was struggling with and with a flash of surprised outrage, I realized that the problem was not her reading, but the book itself.
A few sentences from the book:
I smiled very sneaky.
I quick closed my eyes.
I quick grabbed the napkin.
I do not know him that good.
His nose was running very much.
I look at Herb's plate. He had three more foods to go.
Mrs. Gutzman looked funny at me.
I quick closed my eyes? I did not know him that good? He had three more foods? Are you freaking kidding me? And this is only from two out of ten chapters. This thing reads as though it was written by someone with a poor grasp of the english language and they're using it as teaching material?
All this time, I thought her poor manner of speech was due to being around the kids at her daycare, but now I see that she is being taught this crap at her school!
What really boils me is that this is not a public school. It's a private school with a long waiting list. We are paying for this.
I want to talk to her teacher about having my little girl absorb this crap into her mind but my boyfriend thinks I'm overreacting and that I should be happy she's reading at all. I'm overjoyed that she's reading but I can find her better books to feed her mind with than this piece of garbage. I don't think it's overreacting to be upset that the school we pay well over a grand a month for is teaching my little girl to sound like an uneducated moron.
For the curious, the book is called Junie B., First Grader: Boss of Lunch by Barbara Park. Way to fail, Scholastic.
I did a little poking around after reading that post and I found that, the author was trying to simulate the speech of a first grader... Yes folks, that's right. The author wrote a book for FIRST GRADERS and expected them to grasp the concept of vernacular enough to realize that Junie B's speech isn't an example of good English. I'm sorry, but I really can't see trying to explain that to a six year old.
What's next? "Portrait of the Artist as a Toddler"? Perhaps, "Animal Farm Junior"? Wait... Perhaps we should save the stream of consciousness and hip-deep, communist allegory for the next nine week period, since, You know, you really should at least try to space out explaining literary tropes that FAR above a first grader's intellectual pay grade. Let's just make sure we give the kids a few more books in the vernacular and assure that their basic grammar skills are fucked from the outset...