"In some American households and schools the Bible was used to teach children how to read, but its stories formed the basis of early schoolbooks as well," informs Reader Digest's The Bible Through the Ages textbook from 1996. "Similarly, when girls went to school in the 18th and 19th centuries, they often practiced needlework by cross-stitching prayers or verses from Scripture and used scenes from the Old and New Testaments as the subjects of their silk-embroidered or watercolor pictures. The finished pictures were hung up at home by proud parents . . .
"The Bible and its themes, in fact, figured in family life in a variety of ways. Children marched animals two by two onto Noah's Ark toys or played with other Scripture playthings, known as Sunday toys. Adults graced their dining tables with pitchers and sugar bowls decorated with molded images of the Apostles or Bible scenes, such as Rebecca at the well. Colorful pottery figures of Old Testament scenes decorated mantels. Reading the Bible together was an evening pastime in many households, and the Bible itself was often used as a repository of family records . . .
"On weekday nights or after Sunday services, slaves often gathered at one of the cabins or at a safe place out-of-doors to conduct their own services. Then they could hear preaching from one of their own, perhaps a slave who had managed to obtain some rudiments of literacy and religious education.
"They mastered the Bible orally, as had the early Christians, and derived special relevance to their own situation from its lessons and tales. They identified particularly with the plight of the Israelites in Exodus and saw Moses as their great biblical hero . . . The slaves translated the tales and lessons they learned from the Bible into music--spirituals that remain among the most beautiful and enduring portions of America's cultural heritage. Indeed, these songs, which both instruct and inspire, embody a folk consciousness that has powerfully informed the African American awareness of tradition...
"During the Civil War the American Tract Society distributed 24-page Bible selections to the Union troops. Meanwhile, the South suffered such acute Bible shortages that a black market in Bibles sprang up, and Confederate guards paid their prisoners as much as $15 for a copy. The Confederate States Bible Society succeeded in slipping English Bibles past the Union blockade, providing much needed spiritual solace to their side of the war...
"The New York Asylum for the Blind printed a New Testament with raised letters in 1836, a full 17 years before the development of braille. Other specialized Bibles included the Soldier's Pocket Bible, distributed by local Bible societies to American troops as they marched south to fight in the Mexican War."
*****
"Listen, when you sit and read that
Book, that’s like God Almighty sitting across the table from you talking to
you," reminds my pastor Richard Jordan. "Don't ever forget that when you read it! Now, if you won’t forget
that, you’ll fall in love with that Book in a way you never did before. And it
will consume you. It will pull and tug at you and you won’t ever want to get
too far away from it."
Extensive
research shows strong links between growing up with books and reading aloud and
later language development and school success.
“Books
contain a more diverse set of words than child-directed speech,” says Jessica Montag, an assistant research psychologist at the University of
California, Riverside. “This would suggest that children who are being read to
by caregivers are hearing vocabulary words that kids who are not being read to
are probably not hearing.
"So reading
picture books with young children may mean that they hear more words, while at
the same time, their brains practice creating the images associated with those
words — and with the more complex sentences and rhymes that make up even simple
stories.
"Children
whose parents reported more reading at home and more books in the home showed
significantly greater activation of brain areas in a region of the left
hemisphere called the parietal-temporal-occipital association cortex."
*****
"This
brain area is a watershed region, all about multi-sensory integration,
integrating sound and then visual stimulation," according to Dr. John
S. Hutton, a clinical research fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical
Center.
"This region
of the brain is known to be very active when older children read to themselves,
but it also lights up when younger children are hearing
stories. What was especially novel was that children who were exposed to more
books and home-reading showed significantly more activity in the areas of the
brain that process visual association, even though the child was in the scanner
just listening to a story and could not see any pictures.
“When kids
are hearing stories, they’re imagining in their mind’s eye when they hear the
story. For example, ‘The frog jumped over the log.’ I’ve
seen a frog before, I’ve seen a log before, what does that look like?'
"The
different levels of brain activation suggest that children who have
more practice in developing those visual images, as they look at picture books
and listen to stories, may develop skills that will help them make images and
stories out of words later on."
(new article tomorrow)
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