“How Do You Make Children Articulate? It’s a Long Story…” describes an attempt at two British primary schools to teach children excellent langauge usage. The schools are ending each school day with one minute of classical music followed by a reading from The Wind in the Willows, or The Arabian Nights, or Aesop’s Fables.

“Language comes mainly through listening in early childhood and most children will listen to a good story well told,” Mr Bruton-Simmonds said. “The normal child has heard the classics for pleasure. In music and in literature the child is fortified. By the time a child is 10 it will know instinctively what is inferior art and what is good. It would not know the reason but it will know intuitively. It is by hearing a story read that you learn your love of language. That is how I learned – through my parents reading stories to me.”

That is, actually, how I learned as well.

What was I read in school?

The Wind in the Willows
A Wrinkle in Time

What did I read my boys?
The Narnia Series
A Wrinkle in Time

I wonder if teenagers would sit still for some family reading time. Or if they would like to participate in the reading?