“How many times can you fall in love? By reading, you can fall in love every time you begin a new book or reread a treasured one.” —Donalyn Miller
In The Council Chronicle article, “A Conversation with the Book Whisperer,” Donalyn Miller tells how she helps her students fall in love with books, about building a culture of reading and a community of readers in her classroom.
Donalyn Miller’s ideas are embodied in the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Center’s mission. The Center advocates for giving students access to books and choice so they can grow into the best citizens that our democracy needs. And, we trust our educators to know what is best for their kids.
This echoes what what Thomas Jefferson said several centuries ago,
“The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large…”
That’s why censorship is a problem in a democracy like America where we want each student to grow up to be a responsible, critically thinking citizen.
Not many places in the world put such a powerful freedom as the freedom to read in the hands of its people.