The title of the children’s third grade science book was “Push, Pull, Twist” and was ostensibly about physics.  I never did well in physics for there was a lot of math involved, so I avoided that class. However, this little book that I was given to read for RFB&D last Thursday was fascinating.

I hate it when you are given a section to read in the middle and have lost the opportunity to begin at the beginning.  So, I lost a lot of very important foundation stuff by beginning my session where the discussion involved inclined planes, ramps and screws. I found that I could understand all the things required of third graders and appreciated the drawings and photographs I had to explain to visually handicapped children.  I found it fascinating to describe how a screw’s threads converted downward motion into an inclined plane and thus made it easier for a pointed object to be driven into a wooden block. It is a more subtle approach than hammering a nail into that block.  From experience, I know that the screw is much, much harder to remove from the wood than a nail.  You can use a lever, a crowbar or the back of a hammer and get the nail out.  The screw needs to reverse the action, using a driver.  I have often used a screwdriver as a hammer but could never use the back of a hammer as a screwdriver to get the threads of the screw to a place where they could gouge out chunks of wood in the process.

I think that education is a great thing.  Kids who have the opportunity to learn from excellent little books like these are lucky. They are dedicated to simple concepts within bigger subjects that will submerge them later on when math is involved.  I think this approach is so much better than the heavy, hardbound and philosophy larded tomes they are burdened with – or was that yesteryear when I was a school kid?

Learning little bits in depth is the description of this example that I read with relish Thursday.  I hope that my appreciation for the content and the way it was clearly written carried over into meaning for the kids who would hear my voice. I greatly appreciate the opportunity that being a reader for RF&D has given me to enjoy the work – for work it is – and the learning it provides me – a once very poor student in the subject of Physics in high school.  As I remember it, this was a subject that was saved for the last year in high school and it was never touched on in the lower grades.

I was the kind of student who liked to read before others in school.  When asked to read before the class I became an actor and really put emphasis, color and interpretation into the content. This was more important to me than meaning.  Well, as the saying goes – we grow old too soon and too late smart!