By Jim Studer
My mom called, “Jack says for you to bring books. He can’t stand TV anymore.” My brother had suffered a severe knee injury playing football in the snow. He was flat on his back on the window seat at my parents’ house. He had several more weeks of immobility ahead. Keep in mind in the 1960s they couldn’t do the wonders they can do today in knee repair.
I brought Jack several books. He loved the outdoors, hunted and fished. I gave him a copy of The Last of the Mountain Men by Harold Peterson. He wrote about moving to Idaho. He was fed up with the corporate world and sold off all his assets. He lived off the land by hunting and fishing. He built his own lodging, even made his own tools. I also gave my brother some of Jack London’s novels such as Call of the Wild.
Jack was not a reader before that. Some fifty years later, living in Alaska for most of those years, Jack is still a reader. He sends me nonfiction and fiction set in Alaska. Some of the authors he knows personally. Keep in mind it was Jack who wanted to read.
I recently read an article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune about the Minnesota Department of Education going back to phonics in the teaching of reading. Test scores have been dropping. Kids and many adults today don’t read. Many, especially kids, are held hostage by the descendants of Thomas Edison’s invention. They have been denied the discovery of books. Youngsters today have their cell phones with internet connections and play computer games and are able to dial up the answer to all of their questions, factual or not. They have no motivation to read. Jack had a motivation to read.
Motivation has always been the key to learning. My dad had little education and couldn’t read very well. He loved gardening, planting trees and tending his lawn. Even though he couldn’t read very well, he discovered seed catalogs and other printed material on gardening. Through these he improved his reading. He ordered special seeds and discovered how to grow giant pumpkins. When I lived in Brazil my mom sent me pictures of two of my nephews sitting on top of one of those giant pumpkins. Dad was a poor reader but was motivated to read about improving his garden. I ate some of the special golden raspberries he learned to grow. He loved baseball and read the sports pages. He learned to read what he wanted to know.