Dictionary Near the Dinner Table?
October 15, 2011 8:11 AM   Subscribe

When I was growing up, I remember my curiosity was encouraged by the presence of a dictionary and a map of the world near the dinner table (if we had been able to afford it, we probably would have had an encyclopedia as well). When there were doubts about how to use a word, or where a certain place mentioned in the news was located, we would immediately look it up. I remember at least one of my teachers mentioning a similar practice, but when I tried doing a Google search for "dictionary at the dinner table" I came up with very little besides Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo): "growing up, I thought there were two types of families: 1) Those who need a dictionary to get through dinner. 2) Those who don't..." ## I've always believed that in a healthy family, parents and children sit together at the dinner table and talk about their day in school/at work, today's news etc. Even if they watch TV, they should do so together and discuss/criticize what they see. If parents want to help their children speak and write better English, the best way is to teach by example. Children who often encouraged to check the dictionary/an encyclopedia will do well in school. ## Did any of you Baby Boomers have reference books near the dinner table, or was my family an unusual case? With the slow fading away of printed books, I worry that fewer and fewer people will use the dinner table as a place where a family can engage in lively discussion and debate. I love technology (I run a multimedia computer lab and I often use CALL software), but a Kindle or a SmartPhone near the dinner table seems too distracting, something that would pull the family apart. Any younger parents care to comment?
posted by juifenasie (9 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This seems like maybe it's an AskMe question? In any case, it's not a MeFi post. -- jessamyn



 
Did you intend to post this in AskMe?
posted by HuronBob at 8:13 AM on October 15, 2011


My parents always insisted I read FAQs, and I do the same with my thirteen kids.
posted by Abiezer at 8:14 AM on October 15, 2011


A Kindle near the dinner table will pull the family apart?
posted by box at 8:15 AM on October 15, 2011


I think this is GYOB territory.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:17 AM on October 15, 2011 [1 favorite]


It's not the tool, but what you use it for.

As it stands however, I think this post may be a bad use for the MeFi tool.
posted by carsonb at 8:17 AM on October 15, 2011


"A Kindle near the dinner table will pull the family apart?"

It's the magnetic force of the words that does it.
posted by HuronBob at 8:17 AM on October 15, 2011


A blog post on the Blue will tear the MeFites apart?
posted by hippybear at 8:17 AM on October 15, 2011


You might want to try posting this at /r/Mommit or /r/Daddit- it doesn't really work for Metafilter.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:17 AM on October 15, 2011


For what it's worth, I was encouraged to look things up when I was a child. Now that I am a librarian, it has become a career-enabled pathology. Fortunately, my phone lets me look things up almost everywhere, so the damage to my spine from hauling all those reference books around is finally healing.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:19 AM on October 15, 2011


« Older Bernard Pras’ Amazing Assemblages   |   Mark my word, they won’t want anything you can... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments