Day 5

“The more you know the less you know you know.” No doubt others have said similar things but I am taking credit for that particular piece of wisdom.

Today I had Ben read an article in the Columbus Dispatch (from the AP) about Hurricane Gustav. After giving him a chance to read it I asked what he thought the main theme was and he correctly stated “the hurricane was not as bad as people expected it would be”.

Then I read the article out loud. As I was reading to him it I realized there must be words and terms he did not understand. What did he do?
“Ben, do you know what a Levee is?”
“I was wondering about that! It sounded like a brand of car!”
“I can see that, but in the context of the article, what did you think in meant?”
“It sounded like some sort of hill.”

Floodwall, storm surge, Category 4, Cajun, Army Corp of Engineers – did he know what they were?

Then I gave him an article about Gustav from the Wall Street Journal. I wanted him to see how two credible sources could write different stories. They were certainly different in focus.

As we were talking and comparing I realize that there were a multitude of paths that these articles could lead us down. We took a short trip to the geography of New Orleans but we did not explore many other interesting (at least to me) topics that the articles touched on.

Recognizing that this exercise needed to be done differently next time (most importantly he needed a more directed purpose in reading in the first place) we moved on, but first I reiterated the two important lessons:
- if you do not understand something, figure it out before moving on.
- Two credible sources can produce different articles.