Quote:
Originally Posted by Formendacil
On the flip side, however, I think the overall vocabulary of children has decreased--certainly, overall literacy peaked years ago. I seem to recall being told that while more people have some literacy, the overall literacy level has dropped, which is why newspapers are basically written at a fifth grade difficulty level. I have no idea where The Hobbit would rate on such a scale, but I daresay that although it has a lighter tone for much of the book and is hardly "too scary" by 2010 standards, it definitely fits with Tolkien's general philosophy of "don't dumb it down for them--they'll only learn the words if they have to use them."
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Funny you should say that. I was just talking to one of my friends (well, my mother's friend) the other day about dumbing things down. When I was in elementary school we had reading time in all of our classes. Our teachers had buckets upon buckets of books. I don't think that we had TH or any other Tolkien book in there, but I do remember that we had plenty of chapter books even when I was in first and second grade. Perhaps it's just my school that pushes your learning level higher, but I'm not so sure. As I was saying, the lady whom I was speaking to has two children. One (Christopher) is nine, the other (Emily) is six. Emily has got into my school (which is k-12) and Christopher has not. Apparently Christopher is doing work that way beneath his level of education and Emily is being challenged a bit. The thing is, that in third grade, I remember reading and reading during our hour long reading times. Children are not even being taught by that standard any more. Funny that, since I'm not even out of high school yet.
Now, I
believe that this is a major case of dumbing the children down because schools want every child to pass the grade and not be held back. That is severely messing with students' ability to cope with more work and a higher standard of education. At least in the US, I can't really say anything of any other country. In my school we were taught to love learning, to enjoy it, to push ourselves, to be educated outside of school. This, I hold to. I'm not sure about many others in my generation. You see a lot of uneducated people out there. Perhaps they would have done better if they had read TH when they were young.
I read TH when I was thirteen (as most of you probably know already), and it was an easy read. Come to think of it, LotR was a pretty easy read too. I've always seemed to be more advanced at reading than most of my peer group, but that's beside the point. In fourth grade I was at an eighth grade reading level, which isn't very impressive, but I think that we could say that we could up the standards of education. The Hobbit is most certainly a children's book. I am reading it to my nine year old brother and he gets the concepts in it just fine. As does he get the concepts in other books that may not necessarily be of the same level of understanding. As for TH being put in another section of the library, bookshops, ect. I don't know. I bought my copy in the fantasy section in a boxed set alongside LotR, and I've never seen it anywhere else. I do think that putting it in other parts of the shop would be good for business. Despite the fact that a nine year old could read it, and a five year old can understand it, it really is a book that can be read by all groups. Therefore, the more places you can put it in a bookshop, the more advertising you can do for it. That's my take on it anyway.