Everyday Canvas

Flight into Reading Appreciation

Prompt: My First Flight: You might be moved by the sheer technology of it or the travel abilities that it affords. Let's see if you can connect with the excitement and the mystery and how it has changed your view on travel.



I almost couldn’t remember my first flight, which took half an hour on the air, as I was very little. It shouldn’t be too long a distance and I can’t even remember from where to where. Neither can I recall any excitement or mystery connected to it. I went with my mother, uncle, and aunt, who treated it as if they were going to a party. No one was afraid, but everyone had their best clothes on, so unlike today’s travel, which I appreciate more, by the way. Who needs a dress-up occasion just for going from place to place! Since those three adults with me had grown together, they had great camaraderie among them, and I recall feeling left out of “adult” talk.



My better flights have come through my reading. Just yesterday, I wrote a review on "How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines"  , a superb book, which points to recurring themes, metaphors, archetypes and characters, and plotlines. That made me recall our seventh grade reading of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. At the time, I had thought of what we were doing as boring. This was the year I was trying to read Dante’s Inferno on my own, so I was no stranger to classics or good writing, but the way we talked about the minute details of war, with no fun or romance in between, bore not only me but the whole class to death.

Later on, through second reading, I appreciated how Henry, the protagonist, turned from a trembling coward to a brave soldier. This wasn’t pointed out to us, because at the time, the teachers were using what they called, “the direct method,” which meant the students had to discover the strong points on their own. This shouldn’t apply to seventh graders who were bored out of their minds with such a dark and heavy plot, but the teacher couldn’t catch on to that fact. What bugged us the most was the referral to Henry as “youth” throughout the book. Maybe this was something that got lost in translation, but it is annoying, in our language, when the protagonist is referred to in a generalized term instead of his own name. Not only that, though. To make matters worse, we were to read a few pages each week and discuss it in class, which took more than a semester, the drag of it adding to the boredom.

I understand that aesthetic reading or reading for pleasure can be employed with some books without analyzing them to death, but a classroom assignment should be directed and the important elements should be pointed out by the teacher. That is what teaching reading appreciation is about or the teachers might as well take a hike.

Taking flight with reading is the best thing that can happen to a young person. It widens the horizon of thinking and plays a key role in later successes in life, but then, any reading coupled with understanding is important for every age group.

As a great adventure, reading at any age can help the imagination make the person go anywhere and do anything; therefore, what better flight than this can exist here in our world?