Reading for Pleasure: Losing Sight of the Forest for the Trees?

Over at the People for Education website, there is an interesting post about kids and pleasure reading. Both the post—sparked by this People for Education report, which documents a decline in reading for pleasure among school-aged children—and the ongoing discussion are well worth reading. Here's the comment I submitted:

Fascinating debate, and one in which I am deeply invested. My biggest concern at the moment is not how to instill a love of reading in my twin daughters—we managed to do that simply by reading to them frequently when they were younger, and by reading books ourselves, constantly—but how to prevent schools from quashing that love. I've blogged on the issue of reading for pleasure versus reading for school before (here), but lately another problem has arisen: the way the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading program is being used in schools as a means of taking away choice—and hence, reading pleasure—from kids. For instance, in my daughters' middle school, the Red Maple program, which is supposed (I believe) to be voluntary, has been made mandatory. The girls' English teacher has told the kids that they must read all ten books on the list if they want to get an A in English. There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin. Both of my daughters have read more than ten books this year, but the key for them is personal engagement—and choice. Some of the books in the Red Maple program don't interest them at all. Others are simply inappropriate for them. (One example is the "problem novel," Dear George Clooney Please Marry My Mom, by Susin Nielsen, a book which assumes that 12-year-olds know who George Clooney is—mine did not—and are familiar with concepts such as "trophy wife.") If choice in reading is going to be taken away from kids in school, I would prefer it to be in favour of classic kid lit (e.g., Little Women, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), and not flavour-of-the-month type novels, many of which have not stood the test of time. (Which is not to say that some of them aren't wonderful.) I don't have a problem with books being assigned to an entire class and discussed in class; my daughters' English class read Animal Farm this year, and it was a positive experience. But when teachers ask kids to read books on their own time, they should not tell them what to read—or even how. (I'm agnostic on the issue of electronic versus paper reading, though my husband and I and both daughters favour the tactile experience of paper books.) Pleasure reading requires two things: time and choice, both of which are being eroded by the misuse of well-intentioned programs like Forest of Reading.

Hurry Up Kids, Adulthood is Waiting! (by J)

Let the Kids be Glad to Be Gay

In a recent article in the Toronto Star, I came across this breathtaking statement:

But there is a time and place for everything, said Rondo Thomas, of the Toronto-based Evangelical Association, but there is no “time and place” in an 8-year-old’s mind to try to make them conceptualize something beyond “tying their shoes.”

Really. So this is what these religious "leaders" think of the intellectual capacities of eight-year-olds. It makes about as much sense as their claim that the McGuinty government's new anti-bullying legislation is tantamount to pro-gay education. Logic is clearly not Thomas's—or his comrade in fanaticism, Charles McVety's—strong suit. (But then these are the same kinds of people who believe that pre-marital sex leads to dancing.)

But even if it were true—even if anti-bullying education of necessity raised the issue of homophobia (the word is mentioned in the new legislation) and other fears of difference, even it if raised it with eight-year-olds, or five-year-olds, for that matter—so what? When you have teenagers like Jamie Hubley and countless others still taking their own lives after being bullied for being gay, clearly anti-bullying education must tackle homophobia. Kids are never too young to "conceptualize" hate. Or love. Which concept comes to predominate in their thinking about themselves, and others who may be different from them, depends to a large degree on the way in which they are raised and educated.

So yes, bring on the anti-bullying, pro-gay legislation. In fact, I urge schools to hold a special pro-LGBT assembly every year, for kids from grades kindergarten to 12. I humbly suggest that the theme song for such an assembly be this classic by Tom Robinson:




(See also Separate Schools for LGBT Kids? and  Breeding Tolerance: Is it Possible.)

Life in 21st-Century Classrooms: the Agenda

I recently read a remarkable book entitled Life in Classrooms, first published in 1968, and reissued by Teachers College Press in 1990. Its author, Philip Jackson, was one of the first educational researchers to apply an ethnographic approach—borrowed from anthropology and popularized through prominent studies of primates—to the phenomena of schools and classrooms. The book is a methodological mishmash, but at its core are Jackson's reports on "field visits" he conducted over a period of two years to several elementary school classrooms in the University of Chicago Laboratory School.The book is full of astute observations about classroom life, most of which still apply today. I was struck, for instance, by an analogy that Jackson draws in the first chapter:

There is an important fact about a student's life that teachers and parents often prefer not to talk about . . . . This is the fact that young people have to be in school, whether they want to be or not. In this regard students have something in common with the members of two other of our social institutions that have involuntary attendance: prisons and mental hospitals. 

Elaborating, Jackson writes:

[T]he school child, like the incarcerated adult, is, in a sense a prisoner. He too must come to grips with the inevitability of his experience. He too must develop strategies for dealing with the conflict that frequently arises between his natural desires and interests on the one hand and institutional expectations on the other.

Jackson proceeds to discuss in some detail both the institutional exigencies of school, and the strategies that children come up with to cope with them. In his observations and interpretations of what he sees—especially his reflections on classroom management, children's and teacher's attitudes towards school, and the power relations operating at the micro level in schools—he anticipates Foucauldian studies of institutional life that began to emerge in humanities disciplines in the late seventies and early eighties.

For this reason—or simply for the rich, troubling portrait of classroom life that Jackson offers—I believe the book should be required reading for teachers' college students. But for the present purpose, what interests me is an image Jackson introduces in the first chapter and which he discusses in the introduction to the 1990 reissue of the book:

I noted . . .how students propped their arms in the air by placing their left hands just above their right elbows when signaling the teacher's attention and I realized that that familiar posture was caused by the fact that the arm usually had to be held high for several seconds before the teacher noticed it . . . . Being heavy, the raised arm required support. The propped arm . . . was a reasonable response to the crowded conditions of classroom life. To my newly awakened interest in such matters, it stood as a symbol of those conditions.

 What's interesting about this passage, and the symbol of the propped arm, is how relevant it still is. In 1968, funding levels for education in both the US and Canada were much higher than they are today, yet large class sizes were the norm. Despite attempts by some provincial governments (Ontario, for example) to set caps on class size in primary grades, "crowded conditions" still obtain in most schools. My daughters' grade 7 class has 32 kids: arms are still being propped.

I would argue, however, that overcrowding is not the most significant issue facing our schools today. It is now known, for instance, that small class size does not guarantee better outcomes for individual students. But the image of the propped arm got me thinking: what is its modern-day equivalent? What action or object epitomizes "life in classrooms" in the 21st century? When I thought about this question, one object immediately sprung to mind: the school agenda.

My daughters were issued their first agendas in Grade 2. The primary grade agendas, which cost five dollars a piece, were colourful weekly school calendars in ringed notebook format, containing all manner of information and trivia, as well as space for jotting down daily homework, an area for "parent-teacher" communication, and the all-important parent initial box. At first glance they looked fairly innocuous, and the girls were happy to have them. But my husband and I were surprised that our local school board, which issued the agendas, felt that seven-year-olds would need them. How much homework, how many deadlines or appointments, we wondered, would seven-year-olds have to keep track of? What issues would arise in Grade 2 that would require daily monitoring by parents (and thus daily initialing) or regular parent-teacher communication?

The reality, of course, is that second-graders do not need agendas. Neither do seventh-graders or even twelfth-graders. After all, most people over the age of 30 managed to get through their school years without them. Looked at another way, however, one could say that if today's school children require agendas, it is because the need for them has been created by the conditions of modern schooling and by the assumptions that underlie and give rise to these conditions. What are some of these assumptions? One is that children require and benefit from homework from early grades through high school, and that when it comes to schoolwork, quantity is more important than quality. (The abundance of evidence to the contrary has done little to shake this particular assumption.) Another is that children must be taught "time management" skills, the deeper assumption here being a blurring of the once distinct concepts of "education" and "training," and the consequent belief that education should concern itself with preparing children to function in the corporate world from which such phrases such as "time management" hail. A third preconception driving the "need" for agendas is that constant monitoring and surveillance of the school-aged child's performance, by both parent and teacher, is necessary and desirable.

Taken together, these assumptions give rise to the conditions that are symbolized by the agenda: not overcrowded classrooms, but overcrowded, over-scheduled, over-burdened young lives. The kids leading these lives are viewed  less as children than as pre-adults who must be moulded into full-fledged adults capable of functioning in the "real" (read corporate) world.

It may seem as if I am (once again!) engaging in theoretical overreaching, but incidents that have occurred during the current school year—my daughters' first in middle school—lead me to think otherwise. For instance: the girls' math teacher told the kids on the first day of class that forgetting to bring their agendas to class was a detentionable offense, as significant as not completing homework. The message this warning was intended to send is that the para-curriculum or what Jackson calls the "hidden curriculum" (though these days it is not particularly well hidden)—in other words behavioural or character lessons regarding organization, time-management, etc.—are as important as the actual lessons being taught, in this case lessons about math.

Another incident involved an "agenda check" by the girls' homeroom teacher. Since parents are no longer required to initial agendas daily, this teacher decided that she would take a look at the kids' agendas to see if they were copying down homework reliably and legibly, as well as noting future assignments, important dates, etc. While flipping through J's agenda, the teacher noticed many doodles. She chided J for doodling in her agenda and told her to stop. J was mildly upset by this, as she is unused to being reprimanded by a teacher. (A year ago she would have been very upset, but middle school is teaching her to grow a thicker skin.) But more than anything, she was puzzled. "Why can't I doodle in my agenda?" she asked. "Who owns my agenda?"

The question of who owns the school-aged child's "agenda" is, I believe, worthy of further reflection by parents and educators alike.

A Grade 7 Math Question

The other day my daughters were assigned a perplexing math question for homework. It was a question straight out of their Grade 7 math textbook, which is the French (immersion) version of Math Makes Sense 7. Math Makes Sense is a Trillium-approved, "constructivist-lite" math textbook series published by Pearson Education Canada, and widely used across the province of Ontario. Here is the question:

Use a place value chart. Explain why you add one or more zeros to the end of a number that you multiply by 10, by 100, or by 1000. [translation mine]

The girls thought about it for a while. They understood that adding the zeros had something to do with the fact that you move the decimal place to the right when you multiply by 10, 100, or 1000,  but they got stuck on that word "why." Why do you move the decimal, thereby adding the zeros?

Now, this type of question is not uncommon in the Math Make Sense series. Proponents of what is variously called "discovery," "constructivist" or "reform" math would say it exemplifies the kind of challenging question that leads children into authentic mathematical "discovery." But does it?

The problem with this question, and others of its ilk that we have encountered over the years with this series (and with Nelson Mathematics —the "competition" to Math Makes Sense), is that the type of analytical reasoning needed  to answer it adequately is not commonly taught in the contemporary math classroom. What the writers of the question are looking for is a kind of conceptual grasping, written in English. For instance, here is the answer provided in the back of the book:

For example: When I multiply a number by 10, it becomes 10 times bigger. In a place value chart, each digit of the number moves one position to the left. The digit 0 occupies the last position.  [translation mine]

For a series that prides itself on furnishing teachers and students alike with a conceptual approach to mathematics, this answer is quite curious. It substitutes one mechanical trick—adding zeros—for another: moving the decimal place. But both tricks are answers to a "how" question, and not to the "why" question  posed.

The inconvenient fact of the matter is that it is nearly impossible to answer the question in a way that is mathematically precise using English alone. A mathematically correct answer requires a mixture of notation (with which kids at this level are mostly unfamiliar) and English. In fact, it requires a proof like this one:

A decimal number is written as \(a_k \ldots a_3 a_2 a_1 a_0\) (for some \(k\))
and represents the value \[\sum_{i\ge 0}^k a_i 10^i.\]

So \(10^d\) is represented by a 1 followed by \(d\) 0's.

Given a decimal number \(x\) represented by \(a_k \ldots a_3 a_2 a_1 a_0\),
what does the representation of \(10^dx\) look like?

\[10^d x = 10^d (\sum_{i \ge 0}^k a_i 10^i) = \sum_{i \ge 0}^k a_i
  10^{i+d} = (\sum_{i \ge d}^{k+d} a_{i-d}10^i) + \sum_{0 \le i < d} 0 \cdot 10^i\]

So \(10^dx\) has the representation \(a_k \ldots a_3 a_2 a_1 a_0\)
  followed by \(d\) 0's,
  as we were required to show.*

Show me the Grade 7 student who can "discover" that.

(See also THIS MATH DEPRESSES ME)

*Proof courtesy of Prabhakar Ragde, professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.

Summertime, and the reading is easy...

When I was a child I had a reputation as a bookworm. I wore the label proudly, since at the time I was unaware of its negative connotations. I remember reading book after book around the pool during March break in Florida, stopping only to dip into the water when I got too hot. During the summer, I read constantly simply because I had the time: my parents, whose parenting philosophy could be summed up by the phrase "benign neglect," did not feel the need to structure my summers.

My own parenting philosophy cannot be summed up as "benign neglect." Like most parents of my generation, I constantly fight the urge to rein in my daughters' freedom and micromanage their lives. But there is one way in which I parent like my mother and father: I do not structure my kids' time during the summer. I eschew the role of "camp counselor" both at the cottage and in the city; I do not see it as my job, and I've found that when left to their own devices, my daughters come up with imaginative and engaging activities to fill their time.

One such activity is reading for pleasure. I don't know how many books J and E read this past summer, but I do know that I was constantly having to replenish their supply. I frequently caught sight of the two of them lounging on the sofa, deeply immersed in their books, and though I sometimes felt the urge to tell them to go outside and get some fresh air, I resisted. They would often make their way outside at some point anyway, but even if they hadn't, I'm not sure I could have justified interrupting their reading. Here's why: I knew that when school started in September, their reading for pleasure would come to a grinding, depressing halt.

When school is in session, my daughters, like many school-aged kids, have very little time to read. Regular homework, extra-curricular activities, and socializing take up most of their free time. When they do find themselves with a spare moment, J and E—who, like most kids, experience the school-year schedule as a grind—are more likely to put on a DVD and collapse onto the sofa than to pick up a book.

A more complicated and insidious impediment to reading for pleasure during the school year has to do with how reading is handled as an academic subject. In Ontario, the reading curriculum, as set forth in documents available on the Ministry of Education website, focuses on

developing the knowledge and skills that will enable students to become effective readers. An effective reader is one who not only grasps the ideas communicated in a text but is able to apply them in new contexts.

Now, "effective readers" and people who read for pleasure are not mutually exclusive categories. And, to be fair, the curriculum document does acknowledge the importance of nurturing a love of reading:

A well-balanced reading program will provide students with opportunities to read for the pleasure of discovering interesting information as well as for the pleasure of self-discovery . . . and for the sheer fun of it.

But in reality, the Ontario language curriculum and the pedagogies that support it are not particularly conducive to fun or pleasure. Both seem heavily informed by research into the mechanics of reading, drawn from cognitive science and psycholinguistics, as well as by myriad constructivist and reader response theories borrowed from disciplines such as sociocultural psychology and literary studies. The result is an emphasis on the process of reading, and the "metacognitive" strategies that children and adults use when learning to read or when actually reading.

One such strategy involves the making of connections. In their influential book, Mosaic of Thought, reading researchers Susan Zimmerman and Ellin Keene, (synthesizing insights from transactional/reader response theory and cognitive science) outline three principal types of connections that competent readers make: "text to self," "text to world," and "text to text." Other theorists—such as Richard Anderson and P. David Pearson, in their seminal essay on Schema Theory—have emphasized the importance of prior knowledge to the reading process. According to Schema Theory, competent readers activate their prior knowledge (organized into schemata) to draw inferences, make predictions or employ "fix-up" strategies when they read. These activities and strategies allow readers to assimilate unfamiliar material by comparing and integrating it with what they already know, thereby enabling comprehension and learning.

It is important to note that these theories of reading—and the many others which inform reading curricula across North America*—are essentially descriptive in nature: that is, they attempt to describe what actually happens in the minds (or more recently, in the brains) of readers while they read. But during the circuitous journey from university to teacher's college to classroom, descriptive theories invariably devolve into prescriptive practices. So, for example, educators deduce (not entirely logically) that if effective readers make "text to text" or "text to self" connections or use inference and prediction to aid in comprehension, then children should be taught to read in this manner. The resultant pedagogy can take some unexpected and occasionally counter-productive forms.

A case in point: When my daughters were in Grade 2, their teacher decided that one of them, E, had a problem with comprehension. Asked what a certain chapter book reminded her of, my daughter had replied, "nothing." It's quite possible that the book did in fact remind E of nothing in her own life: at seven, her life experiences were somewhat limited. But I suspect the main reason she said "nothing" is that she was shy and inhibited around adults. The trick with kids such as these is not to ask a question that can be answered with a single word. If the teacher had asked E what the story was about, or whether or not she liked it, E would have told her, as she told me a couple of weeks later, following the parent-teacher interview in which I learned about the incident. On another occasion, the teacher asked a group of kids to predict what a certain book was about based on the cover. E's answer was, "I don't know." When I asked her why she answered that way, she said, "You once told me not to judge a book by its cover." (I stand by that advice!)

So in E's case, this emphasis on the supposed process by which efficient readers comprehend what they're reading backfired. The teacher's single-minded focus on what she referred to as "metacognition" actually prevented her from ascertaining who could read and comprehend simple chapter books and who could not. (According to my daughters, the outgoing kids would babble on about how the book reminded them of this and that, and would be rewarded for doing so, no matter how outlandish their answers.) Interestingly, E's teachers in the previous and following years chose not to use this method to assess reading ability; both recognized that E was a strong reader by evaluating her oral and written book reviews, and by asking her less scripted questions about the books she was reading.

Fortunately, these awkward moments with the Grade 2 teacher did not significantly affect E's attitude towards books or reading. But what worries me in retrospect is that they could have. They could easily have shaken E's confidence in her reading ability, thereby turning her off reading altogether. As it is, she learned that reading and discussing books in school (as opposed to at home) was not a pleasurable experience.

Unfortunately, that impression persisted and was compounded by other aspects of the reading curriculum. In the later elementary years, for instance, literature circles became one of the main vehicles by which the reading portion of the language curriculum was fulfilled. Harvey Daniels, in his book on the topic, describes literature circles as "a form of independent reading, structured as collaborative small groups, and guided by reader response principles in light of current comprehension research." In other words, a bit like a book club for kids, which sounds appealing. Indeed, it's difficult to object to the idea of students getting together in groups to discuss books; however, it seems that in the case of literature circles, somewhere between concept and execution, a vital ingredient got lost: fun.

In reality, literature circles are not kid versions of book clubs. Unlike adult book clubs, they are not self-organized. Most often, it is the teacher who chooses the books and the teacher who decides what types of activities the group will engage in. Typical (rotating) roles in literature circles include: "Discussion Director," "Passage Finder," "Illustrator," "Connector," "Vocabulary Enricher," "Investigator," and "Summarizer." There is nothing particularly objectionable about any one of these roles taken individually, but I wonder how many adults would join a book club in which these sorts of activities were required. (I certainly wouldn't: I can't draw, for one thing!) It should come as no surprise, then, that kids are not enamoured of them either. Both of my daughters love to read, but neither of them enjoys literature circles. Too little choice, they say, and too much busy work, often sent home as homework.

But critiquing current practice is easy, especially for a parent like me; I don't need to worry about fulfilling curriculum requirements or engaging children in a classroom setting. The question that needs to be asked—that I need to ask myself—is, what would a reading program that strove to inculcate a love of reading look like? The conclusions I've come to as a result of thinking about this question are not easy to articulate. But my sense is that the current curriculum, while well-intentioned, focuses too much on notions of "efficiency," "mastery," and "competence," and too little on concepts such as "enjoyment" or "pleasure."

Instead of asking what efficient readers do when they read, it might be worthwhile to consider what people who read for pleasure do. Do they stop when reading a novel to ask themselves what might be coming next, or what the book reminds them of in their own life? Do they put sticky notes (literal or figurative) on important passages? Do they make inferences and fill in gaps when the text is ambiguous? The answer is to all these questions is: quite possibly. But often people who read for pleasure do not do these things, or at least not consciously. Sometimes people are looking for escape when they read. Sometimes there are no relevant "text to self" or "text to world" connections to be made. Or sometimes, the cognitive processes that occur when a person reads are so routine as to be imperceptible. As Anderson and Pearson concede, "Many aspects of reading may be automatic, at least in a skilled reader, and hence require very little cognitive capacity."

Reading requiring very little cognitive capacity: it's an apt description of light "summer reading" for many people. Such reading is valuable in its own right for the pleasure it brings the reader. And despite its being largely automatic and imperceptible, learning—in the form of specific, measurable literacy skills—is occurring during this type of reading; in fact recent research suggests that intrinsically-motivated leisure reading may lead to greater gains in reading comprehension and competence than extrinsically-motivated (e.g., classroom) reading. But the less tangible rewards of reading for pleasure are equally—if not more—important. When a child or adult reads for pleasure, he or she is voluntarily exploring unfamiliar worlds, catching glimpses of the vast plethora of human character and behaviour, and thus building and expanding his or her capacity for empathy.

What better reason to encourage or at least allow for pleasure reading during the school year? Doing so would not require a wholesale overhaul of the curriculum. Teachers could keep the literature circles, for instance, but make them truly student-directed. They could let students choose the books and determine the way in which the circle is organized. Let the children read and discuss in any way they see fit. But, most important, just let them read. Give students unfettered access to the school library, and set aside blocks of time daily for independent, no-strings-attached reading. In other words, import a bit of lazy summer reading into the school year. Perhaps in this way, educators—with the help of supportive parents—can begin to bridge the troubling chasm between reading for pleasure and reading for school .


*For an overview of of these theories, see Lenses on Reading: An Introduction to Theories and Models, by Diane H. Tracey and Lesley Mandel Morrow.

A Grade 6 Graduation Ceremony: Awkward

It's mid-summer, we've been to the cottage and back, and my daughters have put Grade 6 graduation behind them. I, too, have tried to forget about it—unsuccessfully. I've been brooding about the ceremony (held over four weeks ago), ruminating on aspects that gave me pause, caused me to wince or—worse—made me angry. I've hesitated to write about it here, but images of the event have persisted in my heat-addled brain, refusing to cede ground to more seasonally-appropriate thoughts. So here it is: my admittedly jaundiced take on one particular Grade 6 graduation and awards ceremony.

It began inauspiciously. Chairs were set up on the leafy lawn of the handsome, 90-year-old public school which my daughters, J and E, have attended since Grade 1. The setup looked pretty, as it always does when the school's Parent Association puts its collective mind (and applies its considerable financial muscle) to something. But just as parents, nannies, aunts, uncles and grandparents were piling out of their SUVs, it started to rain. Staff and parent organizers held out for several long minutes while freshly blow-dried hair wilted, and suits broke out in rain splotches. Finally, the principal called it, and guests were asked to bring their own chairs into the stifling, non-decorated gym.

But in the two and a half-hour ceremony that followed, physical discomfort on the part of guests was the least of the problems.

First there were the interminable speeches. Trustee, area superintendent, parent representative, vice-principal, principal—all spoke about how wonderful X Junior Public school is, how fortunate (read economically-blessed) we all are to have been associated with it. The local Trustee spoke first, turning to address the graduates sitting on benches facing the audience. His speech was the best of the lot. But though he spoke to the graduates, and made interesting points about different avenues to success, in the end he, like the others, seemed to speak for the benefit of, or with the intent of impressing, the adult members of the audience. True, there were student MCs and four student valedictorians, one for each graduating Grade 6 class. Their speeches were short and occasionally funny but, ultimately, they were minor blips in a sea of boring, adult self-congratulation.

Then the dispensing of awards began. There were prizes—small wooden plaques with the recipient's name engraved on them—in physical education, art, music, and French; there were also spirit, character and leadership awards (but, interestingly, given the emphasis on STEM in the TDSB, no science or math awards). I suspect I was not the only parent made uncomfortable by the way the awards were allocated and bestowed. In a misguided effort to be inclusive, several students were chosen to receive each award. So, for instance, the art prize was handed out to three students, the phys. ed. prize to four, and so on. While possibly a good idea in theory,* the result was that at least 70 per cent of the entire graduating class (of approximately 125 kids) received awards. That left a minority of kids who did not, which is far worse for the award-less than if only a few kids had been recognized. More troubling, regardless of their ostensible purpose, the awards seemed to celebrate the same types of kids. Art, music, and physical education plaques went to kids who were competent in those subjects, but who also—perhaps more importantly—demonstrated concomitant "leadership qualities." In other words, with the exception of the honor roll certificates and a prize for highest academic achievement, the awards were in fact "spirit" awards—validating kids for displaying the kind of meaningless "school spirit" I have critiqued elsewhere. So, the quiet, introverted, well-behaved kids, the ones who by default or by choice fall under the radar, were the ones who received nothing.

Given that I have twins in the same class who have completely different personalities, I feel I am uniquely positioned to understand the ramifications of such a system. Both my daughters made honour roll, but J also received an art award. Both she and her sister love art, but E is by far the better artist. She spends a great deal of her spare time creating and studying art, and has educated herself about technical matters not covered in the curriculum, such as shading and colour theory. But J is more outgoing, more obviously enthusiastic and less shy than E. J gets noticed, E does not. J gets the art prize, E does not. E was not upset (at least not overtly), but the irony was not lost on her or her sister. Both instinctively understood that the reward system favours a certain type of personality, irrespective of ability. The allocation of the actual "character," "leadership" and "spirit" prizes reinforced my daughters' understanding of how the system works. These awards were given out to a specific type of kid: the extrovert who exhibits the requisite level of school-sanctioned enthusiasm—at least outwardly.

The most surprising thing about this awards ceremony was not its unfairness, but how apparently oblivious the organizers were to its effect on the audience. After it was over, and we were relaxing at home, my daughters told a revealing story. The final event was the presentation of the graduation certificates, handed out by the Grade 6 teachers to their own students. My daughters' class was first, and their teacher read out each child's name, stipulating "with honours" for the kids who had made honour roll. He read out the first two names, adding "with honours" after each. Then he read the third name; no "with honours" followed. A friend of my daughters' leaned over to J and said, "awkward." Awkward. Exactly. The question is, if an 11-year-old understood this—immediately, intuitively—why didn't the adults in charge?


*One might ask, if inclusion is in fact the goal, why not go all the way, and reward each child for something he or she has achieved during elementary school (as this school in BC chose to do)? Or do we really believe that there are some children who have achieved nothing worthy of recognition?