school will begin for most families in the US.
I meant families. Not just students.
It is more than a page turning on the calendar. It is the true new beginning that so many seek.
New Year's Day has its resolutions. Labor Day is the real beginning.
Sure, we start the school year in advance of that hallowed day that ends the summer in most of the northern tier of states, and while Labor Day is just a day in September, it remains the marker that starts off the learning. The week before, if your family has a student, or many students in school, is still a beginning.
Let this year begin with education for all. Everyone in the family has a job.
This year in a climate of high unemployment, take up your additional job for 2010, the job that will close the year on a more positive note for all in your family.
Set aside an hour a day to read. By read, I mean deeply take in the words on a page of a book. Not a magazine, a comic or a five page something between the covers of heavier paper that claims to be a book. I mean a real book.
Learn something new.
Get a new skill.
Are you trying to economize? Who isn't. But learn how to save some money on reading. Go to the library.
Take the kids. Make an afternoon of it. Bring the neighbor kids that don't otherwise know where the library is.
Buy one of those 'ten for a dollar' notebooks at your favorite discount shop. Get some pens.
Read that book. At the end of each chapter, write what you have read.
Take notes.
As at least one question of yourself about what was on those pages you just finished.
Turn off the TeeVee Machine.
Read another book.
Every week of the month of September, read one new book.
Then, read poetry to the children that are going to bed. Read a fairy tale to them. Read.
Read a new book every week. Change the subject of what you are reading about every week until you find a subject that interests you.
Discuss what you have read. Trade the book you are reading with your spouse, your teenage daughter, your teenage son.
Read the Constitution to each other at the dinner table. Discuss it.
Read the Bill of Rights, and read a newspaper about what is going on in the law.
Read a book about the history of your town, your city, your state.
Find out something new about Lincoln. Learn about the history of the automobile you drive. Learn about the fight to protect the air and water. Learn about the corporations and how companies are structured.
Read.
Read more.
Read more again.
Do not turn out that light until you have finished at least one chapter.
Read whatever your children are reading in school, and discuss those books with them at dinner. Ask questions about those same books as you drive them to their school, walk them to the school bus or walk with them to school.
No matter what, make this the year of the book, the school year of the book. You'll be smarter for it.
Suggestions for reading will follow. Read the suggestions. Then read the books.
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