For the next two posts, I intend on discussing the idea and importance of reading.  First as it pertains to me personally, and second as to its wider implications.

 A couple of years ago during school I was reading a book in a free period.  When I have the time, it helps break the monotony of classes.  But my friend had been making fun of me for it. 

 “So,” I said , “what’s wrong with that?”

 I was rather defensive since it was a book by Frank Herbert, a favorite author of mine.

 “It’s boring! Besides,” he said sardonically, “you’re not doing anything! You just sit there and look at a bunch of words.  Where’s the fun in that!?”

 And that’s what it comes down to for so many people isn’t it: where’s the fun at? I remember sitting there, momentarily stunned, and wondering if that was the beginning of  my complete social demise. 

 “But no?” I thought, “It’s not like I’m the only one who reads!”

 I was surprised at how close to the truth that errant thought actually was.  I can remember surreptitiously asking friends whether they had read anything good lately – just to test the waters.  I couldn’t believe how many said they hadn’t read a book on their own in years.  Sure, they read To Kill A Mockingbird because we had to. They gritted their teeth through Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but that was the extent of it.  So that made me think: why do I like to read?

 So I’ll put out there the few things that I felt were the most important to me when it came to reading.  First, finding what kinds of books I like to read.  Sounds easy, right? Well for a lot of kids you find that they just don’t know what they like.  They’ve never explored the different genres to get a feel for what interests them.  Once you hit on something you enjoy, you go back for more!  Think of the thousands of young kids that are now fantasy nuts because of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.  When you have a new series or novel sitting in front of you by your favorite author, it’s exciting! It’s the only virus that doesn’t make you sick!

 Second, the example set by my parents.  My fondest memories are of my mom and I going to the library on a Saturday, getting a big bag of books, and going home to flop on the bed and read.  It was something she genuinely enjoyed and she wanted to instill that enjoyment in me.  Her with a 1000 page historical fiction on Cleopatra, and me with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are.  It made reading more fun!  If there was a word I didn’t know, I was told I always should ask.  If there was a picture I liked, I would share it with her.  Sometimes she would tell me about what was going on in her book to change things up.  It became an activity that was engaging to all the facets of my curious 5 year old mind. 

 And that’s the most important part.  Reading does not mean sitting in a dark room with a light by yourself.  Reading means engaging yourself in a story that takes you away from your normal life and transports you into the world created by the author.  You can be Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, walking down 17^th century Jamestown with a scarlet “A” on your chest. You can be Harry Potter soaring around the Quidditch field trying to find the golden snitch.  You can be Ender from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game walking down the halls of Battle School.  You can be anything!

 So — ask your kid what he wants to be when he grows up, if he says fireman then give him a big ole’ book about fireman! What’s the worst that could happen? A lecture from your 5 year old about the need for fire extinguishers!? 

[I do apologize for the delay between posts, but it seems the beast that is high school had me firmly in its grasp for a few months.  Stayin’ slow isn’t always easy!]

 Most parents would like to think that their teens don’t cheat.  That they do their work honestly and faithfully.  That their eyes remain on their paper and all work is their work.

 Teens today, however, don’t quite operate that way.  If 10 students were assigned a reading assignment with discussion following it the next day, it would go something like this: 3 students wouldn’t read it all, 4 students wouldn’t read it, but WOULD read the Sparknotes/Cliffnotes/Offline Summary, and the other 3 students will actually do the assignment as intended.  I can honestly say that I fall into the category of actually reading the assignment. Shortcuts are becoming more and more appealing.  A recent study put forth by the Josephon Institute involving 100 randomly selected students from public and private schools showed that 64% of U.S. high school students have cheated on a test, 38% stating they had done so on more than one occasion.  Furthermore, 36% said they had used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment. 

 Who’s to blame for the alarmingly high statistics? Parents? Teachers? Internet? Television? Society? The easy way out is to blame us — the students.  Students are a part of the problem, but perhaps it’s the classroom that could be the problem.  Perhaps an overwhelming focus on, “what’s the answer?” as opposed to, “how did you reach that answer?” is the reason.  I attend a well-respected Private School with teachers who range from ex-NASA scientists to the Dean of Admissions and Sciences at a major state university.  At an institution that prides itself for it’s attention to detail and student understanding of the material, I have actually had a teacher say to me “It’s not important that you understand what you’re doing — just that you do it.”  I was at a loss for words.  Had I actually heard that?  I had.  There are times in life when just having the right answer is what’s required.  Yet there comes a point when you can only get so far with just the answer.  People will want to know the details. 

 And to some degree isn’t that what being slow is about; that the details often hold more weight and meaning than the big picture. 

We’re bogged down with practically unbelievable and unmanageable amounts of work!  Competition for University acceptance is worse than ever and I don’t see it getting any better.  It’s not the situation that people may want things to be in, but reality is what it is.  But maybe — just maybe being aware of what’s going on could improve where we stand.

 Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater?  I had enough sense as a 3 year old not to like the sound of it!  Still — for some, it does have a ring to it.  

Soon enough, I’ll be dead. Of course, I don’t know when that’ll be - but in a way I was dead already. Sleeping used to be the highlight of my day, until the highlight of my day was replaced with insomnia. It came out of nowhere. It was as if I woke up one day and realized my hours were being spent sedated, as the world around me carried on. Over time, I came to realize there was something missing, I didn’t know what, but I knew that it wasn’t too late to seek it.
 
I currently live in a small town called Delafield, WI, where the surrounding ‘neighbors’ have jogging outfits for everyday of the week. It’s exhausting to watch these individuals, these families. Material families. All of the houses look the same in my subdivision, each one painted with their own color to give the illusion that we aren’t all built alike. But I love the house I live in. It’s ugly. Unlike any of the other houses around, it’s a wooden rectangle with windows outlined in white. Bikes scattered on the front porch, each belonging to one of my three younger brothers, cars in the driveway neglected by our garage from the large useless items hidden within. I’m sure it bothers our neighbors, but their perfect houses topped off with perfectly cut green grass that always is cluttered with fertilizer warnings…well, that bothers me. They have this notion that the picture perfect world is the way to go about life and it seems as if our house could be the smudge on that picture. But, that smudge isn’t a bad thing.
 
It makes me think of a gate in Nikko, Japan, called the Yomeimon Gate, it’s an extravagant gate with astonishing designs and carvings intertwined within it. But if you look closely, on one of the pillars, one of the carvings was carved upside down. It’s the only spot that doesn’t follow the pattern. It was said by a great physicist, that the unique print was put in place by the Gods to show that man is not perfect at their peak of assuming they are. Notice how the words ‘unique print’ were used, rather than ‘imperfection’. It’s because we learn from these unique mishaps, it reminds us to dream big, yet keep a foot on the ground when taking that first leap.
 
It’s a great example to feed off of. I would love to introduce my neighbors to the Slow Movement, but as Carl Honore has put more than once - How do we slow down in a world built for speed? And he’s right, it takes a critical moment in your life to realize how you’re living your life…and if it’s the way you want to live it. You have to ask yourself, “What truly is important?”.
 
I am so grateful that I had this ‘Aha!’ moment early on in life. At my age, one would assume I haven’t truly experienced anything significant yet and to some extent they’re correct, but depending on how you look at it, I believe in some respect I’ve experienced more in my life thus far, than my thirty-some year old neighbor next door. She’s still stuck on whether the blue or red jogging outfit goes better with the new Nike’s.
 
I’ve had my eyes opened as to how to view the world in more way than one. And I hope through these blogs, I can reach out to a few people who are searching for the same thing I am. We may not know what it is exactly, but we’ll know when that whisper of a thrill takes us beyond our wildest dreams and we start living life to better ourselves and others without thinking about it. If we can’t paint one big beautiful picture with a few smudges, hopefully we can make a couple of nice ones before we’re taken to that next place.

It’s almost an article of faith these days to assert that children are growing up more quickly. The toy industry even has an acronym to describe the phenomenon: KAGOY, which stands for “kids are growing older younger.” But is this actually true?

Only partly.

In some ways, children are growing up faster. We push them into academic learning and the consumer culture earlier; the Internet exposes them to adult material younger; even toddlers now have schedules.

But in other ways, we seem to be slowing down child development. In our desire to make everyone happy, we shield children as long as possible from feeling bad. Think of school sports days where everyone is a “winner” and gets a medal.

Or look at our loss of nerve when it comes to letting kids go outside alone. Many children today (especially in the middle classes) are raised in captivity, cooped indoors and ferried everywhere in the back of people carrier. Parents are terrified of letting their kids venture outside alone in case they get mugged, run over by a car or abducted by a paedophile. The average distance from home that a child in Britain is permitted to walk unaccompanied has fallen 90% since the 1970s. More than two-thirds of nine-year-olds in London have never walked alone to their local park. Is that growing up too fast? On the contrary.

On Slow Planet there is much discussion about how technology speeds us up, but when it comes to children’s right to roam it seems to have the reverse effect.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, a company unveiled a digital watch fitted with a GPS tracker device. Very James Bond. But the device was not designed for English spies with a penchant for Maseratis and martinis. No, the GPS watch – it’s official name is Num8 - is aimed at parents who want to keep track of their children.

The company that makes the watch insists that it is not another nail in the coffin of child freedom. “Only 20% of children are now allowed to go out and play,” says the chief executive of Lok8u (get it?). “It’s my profound hope that Num8 will help parents feel more comfortable about letting their children go out to play.”

But will it?

I’m not so sure. Maybe it will encourage some parents to let their children play more freely outside - though you might ask what kind of freedom involves constantly updating mum and dad with your exact location to within three metres. But I suspect the watch will just crank up the anxiety for others. For a start, it reinforces the impression that the world is a horribly dangerous place full of kidnappers, paedophiles and child slavery rings – when it is not.

Technology designed to bring peace of mind can also end up doing the very opposite. Just look at what happened with the mobile phone, aka the longest umbilical cord in history. Because we can reach our children anytime, anywhere, we do. And if the phone is switched off, or out of range, for a moment, we panic - if he is not answering, our child must be in danger, something must be wrong. Then there is the peer pressure: if everyone else is in 24/7 phone contact with their kids, then I must be a bad parent for failing to do the same.

But can we really guarantee round-the-clock electronic monitoring of our children? The makers of Num8 think so. The watch uses satellite and mobile phone networks to track kids indoors and outdoors. It also sends alerts if the Num8 is removed without permission. But what if a child wanders into a black zone where coverage is blocked or weak? Or the network crashes? What happens then to the “peace of mind” promised in the Num8 advertising?

And even if we could guarantee constant GPS monitoring of our children, is that really a good thing? I don’t think so. Thanks to the modern obsession with eliminating all doubt and danger from our kids’ lives, something important is getting lost – the time and space for children to explore the world on their own terms, to take risks, to be completely alone sometimes, to break away gradually from the mother ship. There is nothing quite like the rush of pride a child feels when taking his first steps out into the world on his own – walking alone to a friend’s house, or cycling to school by himself. Yet that accomplishment is diminished when you know your parents are anxiously tracking your every move on the home computer. The Num8 also makes it harder to let children go in stages because it is an all-or-nothing tool: you either know exactly where your kid is at all times, or you don’t. This presents parents with an agonizing decision: at what age do you allow your child to leave home alone without the Num8? At 10? 15? Or maybe 25?

The bottom line is that the world is nowhere near as dangerous as we think, or as the overheated media portrays it. Children do not need to be electronically tagged like criminals. We could all be a lot less anxious if we ditched the electronic leashes and let kids roam freely as they have throughout history.

In other words, if we let them grow up a little faster.

A final thought: My guess is that the Num8 will lead to an epidemic of false alarms. It is just such a tempting target for pranksters and bullies – just yank it off a child’s wrist in the playground and wait for his hysterical parents (followed by a SWAT team) to come charging to the rescue….

I’m trying out something new. I’m suspending my impatient, directorial style of parenting and replacing it with a milder form of mentorship. Fully recharged after eight days in the Swiss Alps, I delved into an online parenting course (that I’m admittedly reviewing for someone) and discovered you can actually create a lot more calmness by asking a simple question:

Whose problem is this?

Yes, we all want our children to achieve greatness: if not Oprah Winfrey status than at least head-of-the-class, top-of-the-world, straight-for-the-executive-suite kind of greatness. I’m kidding. Sort of.

Some of us are more ambitious than others. I’ll readily admit I have high hopes for my smart, charming daughter and my entertaining, athletic son. But more importantly, whose life is it, anyway? If my kids don’t do their homework, who suffers? Other than the possibility their lives might emulate the cast of the movie, Failure to Launch, it isn’t really our problem when your kids make bad decisions. Ultimately, they have to deal with the consequences. We only think we do.

Think about it. When was the last time you got in trouble for your child’s poor grades? Or bad behavior at a restaurant? Many of us parents wear the cloak of guilt if our kids act up, and there are people who are more than happy to remind you what a bad job you are doing raising those hellions. Guess what? We can’t control them. But we can control our response. Act out of the ordinary, and your kids start to notice. Mine have.

Fresh off Lesson #3 from today’s parenting course, I jumped into it with vigor.

“I’m bored!” my son whined.

“Oh, what are you going to do?” I asked.

He was stunned.

Normally, I offer helpful hints, tips and tricks to avoid the Boredom Monster. After he recovered from his initial shock, my son said, “I think I’ll call Anton.” He quickly got distracted with something his sister was doing, then proudly announced 30 minutes later that he decided now would be a good time to call his friend. They made a playdate. After a quick peck on the cheek, he was out the door.

My daughter, who tends to challenge me wherever I go, looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I’m doing the rest of my homework after dance class.” She laid out a sensible plan. “Sounds like you know what you are doing!” was all I said. Another stunned silence ensued. No bickering? Commanding? Bossing around? I smiled sweetly and wished her good luck. My daughter looked about her, put on her shoes, and left for Hip Hop.

Fast-forward a few hours. The kids came home. My daughter dilly-dallied. It started to get late.

“Oh, didn’t you say you were going to read outloud?” She claimed she already had. When I reminded her she had said she would do so in front of her father, she had no where to go. “Are you going to read now or after your shower?” She started to squirm. I could tell my calm, question-based parenting was started to sink in. It really is her responsibility to make certain things get done in her life.

Freedom rings in the form of a question. Got to love the New Year!

My name is Evan Slovak [puns on the name will ensue] and I try to keep things slow in my fast-paced third year of high school…try being the operative word. I’m an easy-going Southern-Californian who wears flip-flops in winter and thinks the weather in San Francisco is about as cold as any place can, or should, get. In the past week and a half I have managed to:

- study for three exams
- close the fall production of The Taming of the Shrew as Tranio
- attend a political debating convention
- finish my assigned homework [too much of it, but that will come later]
- try not to think about the SATs
- prepare for the inevitable Thanksgiving dinner questions about college
- celebrate my 17th birthday

I know I got some sleep in there somewhere, but I can hardly remember when. So now that you know I’m a politically-active, flip-flop wearing, sleep-deprived, theater-loving, high school student, I’ll get down to the issue at hand: How can teenagers, in this hyperspeed culture, be slow? I’m as connected as the next teen. My cell phone is at my bedside, laptop on my desk and I enjoy the perks of our technologically charged culture as much as the next person. Yet as a teen, I feel I can safely say that we don’t recognize the magnitude of what is at our fingertips.

As a contributor to Slow Planet, I’ll be tackling this question and providing an inside look at high school students’ current culture of pressure and expectations of constant achievement, and the absence of simple chilled-out peace. I hope that you – whether you’re a fellow student, parent or fan of Honoré’s books - will comment on my posts and rise to this challenge with me. Send me an e-mail at macslovak@gmail.com and I’d be happy to discuss, answer, and exchange any and all aspects of what it means to be, and live, slow!