by Arthur Futterman
A book can’t teach you anything. Now don’t get me wrong, I love books. Books are my friends. I like lots of books. I’m dangerous at the local used bookstores. All those books for a dollar or less. Oh My! Driving with me can be dangerous, too. My car swerves like a snowbird when I pass a thrift store with a book section. My problem really got bad when the library at my college was having their first ever auction. WOW! How could I resist that! With $20 cash in hand, off I went.
I bought my first book for $3.00. A treasure at ten times the price. Within an hour I had 3 more gold nuggets and still had $14.00 left. Then, to my utter amazement, the other students started leaving for dinner! Well, I tell you. I wasn’t about to let a little thing like dinner stop me from getting these choice morsels!
And then it happened. Seeing wallet holders disappear before his eyes, the auctioneer changed his tactic. Instead of auctioning one book at a time, he held up one title from the top of a big grocery bag full of books. He read the title, put it back and said, “What am I bid for the whole bag?” I started salivating. My eyes started twitching in autonomic anticipation. I look at my meager 14 dollars. Could I even bid with so little?
“What-am-I-bid? What-am-I-bid? For this…? The auctioneer went on pleading his case for the entire bag of laden treasure. At last a voice from the opposite side of the room ventured a bid. “Fifty cents!” Fifty cents! I’m not sure who was in greater shock, the auctioneer, or me, or the poor Head Librarian, now twitching in a heap on the floor, watching his valuables being sold for a pitiful pittance.
Not to let fortune favor the foolish, I wagered a bid. “One dollar.” In a mere 20 minutes I was $14.00 poorer and 11 bags of books richer. I recruited the aid of several classmates to help me carry my prize back to our hugely small apartment. With excitement and mirth we burst in, carrying the spoils of my auction conquest. “Look Honey! See what I got?? Gale looked at the 11 bags of books. For some inexplicable reason she didn’t seem thrilled. Have you ever realized that maybe you should have done or said something a tiny bit differently?
Books can’t teach you anything. Teachers teach. Books can give you great things to learn, but it takes a person to teach. All parents are teachers. For better or for worse, they are the most important and influential teachers a child has. It is as inescapable as the ocean meeting the shore.
Children are the most fabulous learners in the world. The people they most want to learn from are parents. Parent, you are a teacher, and your child is learning from you. If you think books are worth your time, so will they. If you read your Bible, so will they. As your students return to “school” this year, he or she will be assigned books to read. Will they learn anything from them?
They will if they read them, but they will also learn from a teacher like you. Read with your children. When they see Mom or Dad reading they want to know more about it. As you read together, there is dialogue and a sharing of ideas. Values, principals, concepts, the threads of life and faith weave their way through the fabric of your relationship with your child. Read a book together. You will treasure the time.
Art and Gale have been home schooling their children, Chris 15, Amy 13, since 1994.