Reading: Essential for life-long learning

It has been said that the essence of teaching is causing another to know. It may similarly be said that the essence of training is causing another to do. Teaching gives knowledge. Training gives skill. Teaching fills the mind. Training shapes the habits.

Teaching brings to the child that which he did not have before.

Training enables a child to make use of that which is already his possession.

Author Henry Clay Trumbull wrote: “He who knows how to teach a child is not competent for the oversight of a child’s education unless he also knows how to train a child.”

A love of reading is an acquired taste, not an instinctive preference. The habit of reading is formed in childhood; and a child’s taste in reading is formed in the right direction or in the wrong one while he is under the influence of his parents; and they are directly responsible for the shaping and cultivating of that taste.

Wise parents will read to their children from birth. While they are still infants, children will acquire a positive feeling associated with reading if properly trained. Then, as they mature, those experiences can be enlarged and enhanced.

Schools across the state have students returning to classrooms, even some via virtual classrooms, this next week. Learning is a life-long pursuit and should not be viewed as something to endure just for the formative years. In a day and age when people are addicted to physical fitness, it’s sad to see how many people neglect their mental and emotional fitness.

Far too often I’ve heard people ranging in age from late teens to 50s tell me they “don’t read.”

Author Mark Twain wrote: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

Reading is exercise for the mind. Just as with a physical muscle of the arms or legs, an unused brain will atrophy.

Reading should include not only light reading for enjoying and escape, but more in-depth reading to challenge one’s thinking and preconceived notions, to broaden horizons, to experience new cultures and beliefs.

Years ago, I was surprised to hear a bright young man who was a senior in high school, and who had more than average grades, tell me he had not read a book since he was 12. I’m not sure how he managed to get through school, but he had no desire to read.

Most of what we teach our children has a direct correlation to our choices — choices in how we behave and think and act. Although as young adults, they will make their own choices, we as parents can lay a good foundation upon which they will, hopefully, build.

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Editor’s note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County, chosen the best small weekly newspaper in Arkansas for five years. She is the mother of nine grown children and 12 grandchildren. The opinions expressed are those of the author. She can be reached at abeard@nwadg.com.