In these perilous times, when disastrous new edicts are being pronounced, it seems, on an hourly basis, it’s hard to remember that there’s more to the newspaper than its international and domestic news sections. Despite the fact that I’m a serious book hugger, I’ve been neglecting the Books section of the Sunday New York Times, but one day a few weeks ago I sought refuge in its pages, where I found a mini-essay/review of the work of Gianni Rodari, an Italian teacher/children’s book writer.
Now, I had never heard of Rodari before, which is astonishing in itself because I’ve spent a good part of my professional life writing with children, reading and reviewing books written for them and helping teachers discover new ways to approach the teaching of writing in authentic and inspiring ways. When I went to the University of Chicago library website to see what they had of Rodari’s works, I made the embarrassing discovery that one of his books, The Grammar of Fantasy, was published by Teachers’ and Writers’ Collaborative Press, an organization I headed many years ago, during which time we began publishing books like his about writing with children. This particular book was published almost 30 years after I left TWC, although I’ve tried to keep up with its work over the years. It almost felt like there had been a conspiracy to keep Rodari from me.
I’d like to share a few quotes from the New York Times article by Mac Barnett to explain why I’m so excited about my discovery, even though I still have not read any of Rodari’s work. The UofC Library has five of his books in English which I’m going to grab as soon as I get over there. My wife thought it was foolish not to be waiting until I had done some reading before working on this piece. She’s probably right, and I’m sure to revisit the subject when I’ve done my homework, but the article triggered some thoughts that extended beyond Rodari that I’d like to pursue, which are warming me on this below zero Chicago day.
Here’s the passage Barnett quoted from a new edition of Rodari’s The Grammar of Fantasy that got my juices flowing:
The decisive encounter between children and books takes place in the classroom. If it happens in a creative situation, where it is life that counts, not exercises, a taste for reading can arise, a pleasure with which one is not born, because it is not an instinct. If, on the other hand, the encounter happens in a bureaucratic situation, if the book is “humiliated” by being reduced to a tool for exercises, (copying lines, summarizing the contents, analyzing the grammar, and so on), if it is suffocated by the traditional academic routines (“interrogation, evaluation”) the technique of reading can be developed, but not the taste for it. The children will know how to read, but they will read only out of a sense of obligation.
Barnett says of Rodari that he is “an author whose life’s work was underpinned by by an appreciation of the child’s ‘underlying seriousness, and the moral engagement that she (the student) brings to everything she does.’”
These two passages from the New York Times piece excited me because they strike close to the heart of the beliefs that were the foundations of my work as a teacher, school director and teacher educator: respect for the child his/her capacity for deep thought, feeling and moral principle who deserves to be taught in ways that inspire and engage him. I would add to this a belief in the child’s power of imagination which must be given room to breathe and to expand. I have no doubt that I will find support for that in Rodari’s writing when I dig into it.
That last paragraph struck me as what unites all the writers and educators who have been my inspiration, the source of strength to withstand the pressures to sell kids short, to see them as creatures into whom “skills” need to be injected, whose passions need to be tamed in order to transform them into unquestioning and compliant citizens.
For me that pantheon begins with Herb Kohl, whose 36 Children awakened in me the belief that even children growing up in the most challenging circumstances are capable of prodigious imaginations if placed in nurturing environments. Herb’s vision also led him to create the aforementioned Teachers and Writers Collaborative which exposed teachers and students to the possibility of children’s writing that went beyond book reports and five paragraph essays.
Joseph (Jay) Featherstone introduced me and a whole generation of teachers to the inspiring work that was in progress in British Infant Schools in Leicestershire. His articles in The New Republic which became the heart of How Children Learn exposed us to the possibilities of teaching in classrooms where children worked in small groups on activities that generated learning. Teachers acted as coaches and facilitators rather than purveyors of knowledge passively received by children. It was a model that required that teachers see their students as responsible and deserving of respect.
Deborah Meier created new schools in New York City and Boston that were the antithesis of Rodari’s dessicated and uninspiring depictions of traditional schooling. She wrote about it in The Power of Their Ideas, In Schools We Trust and many other publications.
David and Frances Hawkins (He: The Informed Vision, She: The Logic of Action) taught me to observe children to encounter their ability to think and discover, even as pre-schoolers.
Michael Armstrong – the headmaster of a school in rural England and the author of Closely Observed Children, who taught me how to dig deep into works written by children to appreciate their skills and their imaginative powers.
This is a very partial list of those who confirmed my beliefs in the respect due to children and their imaginative powers. I invite the educators among you to add your own influences and to jog my memory about others I’ve forgotten to honor. Some of the names on my list are, sadly, unfamiliar to later generations of teachers and even teacher educators. They’re worth checking out as sources of much needed inspiration.
PS. I can’t forget my friends Bill Ayers and Greg Michie whose work has been a source of inspiration for me and for the wonderful young teachers I taught and mentored. They also model a profound respect for kids of all ages that has been a great source of inspiration for me and for many, many more here in Chicago and in the whole country.
