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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

I was considered a gifted child from a young age. In third grade, because of my "giftedness", I was told I could just read instead of participating in the class skit of the planets of the solar system. I used that time to complete the entire Chronicles of Narnia (good books btw - skip The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle though). I've wondered what would happen if we scrapped the most useless 30% of my state's school curriculum and instead replaced it with reading time.

I know sports generally have a metric of "Wins above Replacement" where players are measured in how many wins they are expected to add to their team over a hypothetical average player for their position. I've wondered if you could similarly measure "Learning above reading" where your curriculum is measured in how much the student learns in comparison to if they had just sat down and read a book of their choosing for the same amount of time.

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I'm convinced that people would, in general, be much more competent at general writing and communication if they spent more time reading for pleasure as kids. I developed a huge vocabulary and an instinctive grasp of grammar because I read voraciously; constantly immersed in more-or-less decent writing, I could immediately tell when my own writing was "off".

Yeah being a late reader, I see that I could have done a lot better in English class if I had read more as a child.

There's a comment elsewhere in this thread that suggests there's no link between spelling and higher intelligence.

I disagree. Spelling ability doesn't develop in a vacuum. It's the result of an individual's having seen the words before. Reading develops spelling ability. Reading also develops the imagination and one's ability to reason about abstractions. Reading may not have any influence on spatial reasoning or math ability, but I think it's the primary driver of verbal intelligence.

I used to read a lot, basically all the time, and was never good at writing or grammer. So I don't think it is so easy and clear.

I got better at writing when I took lessons and read books about how to write.

Last Battle and Magician's Nephew are excellent because they provide insight into CS Lewis as an author and person. Even as a child I recognized the 'problems' with those two books and that flash of insight helped with bringing more nuance into my own thoughts. At least I hope so.

As an adult learning about his personal history/development and late conversion to Catholicism explained a lot of what confused the kid version of me who read the books decades earlier

Last Battle left an impression on my younger self that was far greater than the other books which I enjoyed but didn't experience such a visceral interaction with. Other than a weird interest in Turkish Delight despite now knowing that it is probably not as enticing as I might imagine.

If you're in the US, try to get some "Aplets and Cotlets". They're a delicious variety of Turkish Delight made in Washington state from apples and apricots.

He converted to Anglicanism, not Catholicism, to the dismay of his friend Tolkien.

As an avid reader personally, I would have loved that. My son is an avid reader too, however, interacting with his friends and my colleagues over the years, I have realized that not everyone learns well or absorbs enough through reading alone. Some people need to see and/or do to learn.

Reading is a great skill and encouraging kids to read has real value. I have an avid reader who is ten however who struggles with many aspects of writing and communication (organization, idea structure, penmanship, thinking before you speak, etc). He would much rather read and often rushes through other work so he can get back to his reading. He doesn't need more time to read sitting in class, he needs more practice speaking and presenting, learning to construct and edit work and other interactive skills.

Sending your kid to school to read independently seems like a waste of resources, likely tolerated because it takes work from everyone's shoulders and no one complains. I'd like to see the reading be the homework and the day filled with practice, teacher guidance and student coaching, similar to what Sal Khan promotes. None of this has much to do with technology and screens though...

Skip the Magician's Nephew? That's crazy. It's now considered the first book in the series, and I think some of what it covers is the most fascinating aspects of Narnia.

...But he was right about the last battle. Susan dropped out because she discovered sex and rational humanism. I'm with susan!

> I've wondered what would happen if we scrapped the most useless 30% of my state's school curriculum and instead replaced it with reading time.

At our kids school they operate a (third-party) web-based reading comprehension test linked with many books available in the school library.

Kids can collects points in their account on this system if they correctly answer questions about the books they've borrowed and read.

Our eldest has now amassed by far the most points that any child in the school has ever had.

His teacher is convinced it's somehow to do with him chasing lots of points. We, on the other hand, are convinced it's just because he really enjoys reading, and that we have no TV in the house and an awful lot of books...

The thing is there will be kids with low 'learning above reading' score (like a lot on HN probably) and kids with very high 'learning above reading' scores.

I heard one person call the ones you can throw a book and they will be good the kids you could put into a dark room and they will emerge literate.

I was also praised as a child because you could leave me in a book store for 5 hours and 5 hours later I would still be in the same spot reading the same book and enjoying it. I realized now I was praised for that because it was rare!

I love the wins-above-replacement idea. Just reading by yourself sounds like a great "control" treatment. But some subjects, like math, are too hard to learn with just eyeballs moving across a page. Perhaps a math intervention could be measured as "how much better is it than letting the child loose on khan academy?"

My TAG program in school was just us sitting around a table with the art teacher having inane discussions. Literally zero value added.

Spoken communication skills and teamwork are important skills do, despite the protestations of people who live on their computers.

I guess so. Mostly those team activities were an opportunity to re-experience the unfortunate fact that I was generally unliked and socially unskilled.

It might be useful to actually teach those skills as an independent targeted activity, but turning science or math into a social activity sounds like a lose-lose.

And kids who had social skills yet struggled with math still had to do math. School isn't just the Rs, it's also about learning how to function in a society with other people.

http://www.ala.org/tools/research/librariesmatter/reading-fu...

The Magician's Nephew is the best one! You do need to read it after at least the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe though, or it's a bit of a spoiler.

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