I must start by offering my gratitude to students, parents, and especially our faculty for a wonderful start to the year.  I am especially grateful for all the wonderful support we received over the last two Fridays for our two hikes.  The lower school had a wonderful day under the sun and in the mountains hiking to Big Springs.  Upper and middle school students not only made the four-mile hillside journey to Stewart Falls and back but also helped build fences, restore masonry, remove trails, add trails, and many other activities for the Forest Service last week on the National Day of Service.  Most importantly, students are well into their studies for the year and are hopefully also settling into the home routines that school requires.  I believe one of the most important of these routines for families and individuals is time spent reading good books.

The value of reading was demonstrated well through one of my favorite middle school activities over the last eight years: the National Geographic Bee.  I found two types of students that did well at this activity which requires a broad understanding of people and places around the world.  The first group was simply the “geography nuts”, those few students that love spending free time thumbing through an atlas, spinning a globe, and memorizing things such as the capital of Moldova, names of underwater mountain ranges, or tribal groups around the Kalahari Desert.  The second successful group was the readers.  These students didn’t consider themselves experts on geography but because they had read so proficiently they had built a natural base of knowledge about the world that they could draw on freely and enthusiastically.  Of course reading expands knowledge and general cultural literacy in many areas beyond geography.

The concept of cultural literacy has been pioneered by educator and writer E. D. Hirsch.  His basic premise is that in order to navigate successfully in today’s society there is a large body of cultural knowledge and background that needs to be mastered.  In other words, we want to avoid lines that have been reported in college history papers like “Joan of Ark was famous as Noah’s wife,” “Hitler’s instrument of terror was the Gespacho,” or “the airplane was invented and first flown by the Marx brothers.”  These types of errors represent issues in basic literacy but more importantly show a lack of true understanding about the truths and knowledge that need to be used in the world today; they are adorable when spoken by our youngest but not so cute on a college essay.  Meridian, as a strong liberal arts school, helps provide much of this learning.  However, the best way to assist a child in both basic literacy and cultural literacy is to encourage reading.  Reading books exposes students to new people, places, events, and ideas that help them better understand new information as it is presented to them. 

In addition to the required reading for classes I hope we all encourage simple reading for pleasure.  The urge for achievement sometimes pushes parents to fill children’s schedules so full of sports, dance, music lessons, homework, or other activities that it becomes difficult to find the time to read for pleasure.  It may also be difficult to let a child reread their favorite book from the past when we want them to be reading “War and Peace.”  However, if “homework reading” is done we should celebrate and encourage any reading children choose to do whether it’s comic books, classic novels, or the latest series on vampires, wizards, or sword wielding rodents.  We can encourage independent reading best by making reading convenient, providing diverse material, reading aloud to our children, and by modeling a life full of reading.

With this in mind, I would like to begin a monthly book discussion group for Meridian parents.  In addition to picking a book to read and discuss each month I also hope this will be a way to set an example of reading and a forum for parents to discuss books, resources, and other ideas that empower our students’ growth and learning.  For our first discussion I have selected “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink.  I originally read this book after hearing Pink speak at the annual conference for the National Association of Independent Schools.  He does a wonderful job describing the importance of developing our creative cognitive abilities along with the traditional learning in school.  We will meet on the evening of October  22^nd to discuss the book and its implication for ourselves, our school, and our children.  I will ask for RSVP’s in weekly announcements as we come closer to the date.  If you have suggestions for books or other ideas to help make this opportunity more valuable please feel free to contact me.  daniel.smith@meridianschool.org

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