Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Rooms without windows - lives without enlightenment

"A house without books is like a room without windows."
- Horace Mann

Too many people have become used to living in rooms without windows.

The "problem with books" is not the books themselves but the way in which reading is taught in schools. Too many teachers find themselves without resources or with books that are dreadfully out of date or with subjects that hold little interest to kids.

The percentage of people in any society in history that read books regularly has always been small. So long as kids get turned off from reading during their school years, this situation will remain. (Teachers and education systems would never admit this, of course.)

Children want to learn about life. In many school systems, life is among the last things the curriculum intends to teach.

We will continue to have people live in rooms without windows until we teach people that it's better to see the light outside.

Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help people see the light.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/cgi/index.pl

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