The War on Christianity

Taking the Fight to the Christian Right

Menu Bar


Reading & Writing

Reading

When I was a child, my mother used to read to me; Comic Books. I guess she started when I was five and she was nineteen. She was a housewife, always home taking care of the kids, while daddy worked. She would read these comic books while I looked on, showing me the words on the page. This sound is that word. After a few years, I learned that this word is that sound.

By maybe second or third grade, I was able to read these comic books myself. We're talking Superman, The Flash, Spiderman, and Archie, DC and Marvel Comics. Sometimes I would have to ask my mother, "What is this word? And what does it mean?" And she would enlighten me. I guess I might have been eight at that time, maybe third grade, it was a long time ago.

We were reading comic books, side by side on the couch. She might be reading Archie, while I was reading Superman. Anyway, she always finished before me. And so, I created in my mind a competition with my mother. She could read a comic book in 15-minutes. At that time, it was taking me about a half-hour. So, I worked hard to read faster. I concentrated and focused, I guess you could call that studying. Though I didn't think of it that way, I just wanted to be able to read, as fast as my mother.

Then there came the day, when mother and I were reading a comic book, sitting there on the couch together, and I finished before her. It was only a minute faster, but I was so proud. I could read, I had won the competition. So that's how I learned to read.

Okay, that's a sweet story. But the point I want to get across is that, if you want to teach a child to read, you need to give them something they want to read, a good story, with pictures. Bring out their desire, motivate them.

At that age, when I was learning to read, we had all these boring texts, with stupid, unmotivating statements, like "See Spot Run." Learning to read in school, was work. It was not fun. But sitting there on the couch with my mother, reading a Marvel comic book, that was fun.

The point is, if you want to teach very young people to read, give them comic books. In my mind, every Elementary School should have 2,000 Marvel comics and 2,000 DC comic books and graphic novels available for the students to read. It's a story, and it will motivate them to want to learn.

If you have these tools, all the teacher needs to do, is to tell the child that this printed word represents this spoken word, when they don't know. Know your vowels, and sound it out. You can do this, young man, young woman. I think that if schools had comic books, we could get these children to get excited about reading at a much younger age, than we're doing today. Reading is like any other skill, the more you do it, the better you get.

Writing

I think it was Isaac Asimov who said, "A writer is a person who writes." Hmm, I guess that makes me a writer. You know, there is an archetypal truth about writing; the more you do it, the better you get.

Now, reading is what you learn in Elementary School, but writing begins in High School. That's when you get into Creative Writing, writing a good story. Do you remember writing, "How I spent my summer vacation?" Stupid stuff like that is what we're asked to write in high school. Or, maybe you learned journalism; Who, What, Where, Why, When and How.

If you want to teach a young person to write, you need to give them something they're really interested in writing about. And what does a Freshman High School student care most about in this world? If you don't know the answer to that question, you are brain dead stupid. The answer is obvious, and can be summed up in a single word: Sex. These young people are masturbating many times a day, sometime in the High School bathroom, both boys and girls.

Look, the more you write, the better you get at writing. And it doesn't matter what you write. Anything that interests you will do just fine. Now a young person is majorly interested in sex. So, if you're the teacher, task them to writing porn, some kind of sex scene. They will love the assignment, given permission, I assure you.

Some Friday ask them to write a sex scene over the weekend, 500-1000 words. Whatever it is you would like to do with your lover. Make it up, it's your fantasy. But write it down. Then come Monday, let all the other students in the class, read the pieces that the other students have written. The other students can then judge the work based on two questions. Did this piece turn me on, which is what porn is supposed to do, was it effective, on a scale of 1-10? And do you think it was well written, did it read well? Again, a scale of 1-10. Let your peers be the judge.

It's one thing to read porn, or watch porn on the Internet. But when you're writing porn, you're writing your own fantasy. You're writing what you, personally, would like to experience around sexuality. I'll grant you it's more work, but it's a much greater turn-on than watching or reading somebody else's fantasy.

Then the teacher can then grade these pieces for grammar, punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, proper paragraphing, and the like. But the teacher should not judge the content. Hey, it's they're fantasy, honor that, they are writing.

There are a lot of benefits to getting High School students to write porn. Number one, is that they'll write more, and the more you write the better you get at writing. And it doesn't matter what you're writing. Just write. The second benefit is that the boys will get to read the girls sexual fantasies, and the girls will get to read the boys sexual fantasies. By doing so, they will begin to understand what the other sex wants in a sexual relationship. It will make them better lovers.

And you know, it just might happen that some girl reads a boy's porn and likes what she read. Then she might tell him she would like to fulfill that fantasy for him, if he will fulfill her fantasy. Relationships have started in stranger ways than this.

So, the bottom line is, if you want to teach young people to write, start by getting them to write porn. And don't shame them for it.

So, Say I,

Richard the Christ, God Physically Incarnate

 

Menu Bar