Are You Encouraging the Right Behaviors?
And Some Useless Harry Potter Trivia
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, what babysitter broke her leg, causing the Dursley’s to take Harry to the zoo?
That was a question on my son’s reading test.
He got it wrong. He had no idea who broke their leg in the opening chapter. It was a piece of trivia that had no significance to the rest of the book. And yet, he was supposed to know that.
It’s Mrs. Figg by the way. A name that has no real significance until the fifth book.
It’s nice to see that the school’s offering Harry Potter as a reading option. I’d rather have kids read whatever grabs their interest than force everyone into the same standard curriculum. The goal is for kids to enjoy reading and that’s largely predicated on having them read something they’ll enjoy.
But this all falls apart with test questions that focus on trivia.
If the focus is on memorizing irrelevant facts, reading becomes less about experiencing good books and more as a means to an end. Which means that when the tests end, so will the reading.
I could go on for a while about the meaninglessness of reading to pass a test when you’ll never need to do that again in your life. But this isn’t meant to be an indictment of our…
