What books should elementary school students read when transitioning from children’s books to classics? How should children at this stage “read” classics?

Embracing Nature First

Assuming by children’s books we are referring to picture and reading books, it would be beneficial to expose them to more material related to natural sciences and engineering after they have finished with traditional children’s books.

For instance, they can read books like ‘Insect Emporium’ or Jules Verne’s ‘The Mysterious Island’. Encourage them to watch educational documentaries such as ‘Planet Earth’ and ‘Cosmos’, exposing them to the wonders of the natural world.

Our first step is to help children engage with the natural world deeply, establishing a close relationship with nature’s fundamental principles. Encourage them to learn survival skills for the outdoors, camping techniques, acquire knowledge about basic toolmaking, foraging, and cooking. For example, they can learn how to make a rope out of sisal, how to make a bow from bamboo, and how to fire pottery with clay. These practical skills are not only fascinating for children but also align with their natural curiosity, physical, and mental development.

Remember, our ancestors, millions of years ago, spent most of their adolescent years acquiring these survival skills. In comparison, learning to play the piano has been around for less than two hundred years. Our brains are evolutionarily wired to absorb such vivid, hands-on information during this stage of development.

Once children have a foundational understanding of surviving in nature and have established a supportive relationship with the environment, it can effectively alleviate any existential anxieties they may have, leading to more tranquillity than endless prayer. At worst, if they feel ostracized by society, they will have the confidence and skills to survive in nature.

Having children partake in these survival skills provides countless lessons, eliciting profound questions. Why does some kindle easily catch fire and others don’t? Why can some of us create shoes out of sisal-rope while others cannot? These provide opportunities to delve deeper into the science and principles behind these activities.

Prioritize practical tasks over so-called ‘fun experiments’. Fun experiments are often designed for adults’ amusement and are not necessarily intuitive or of practical value for children.

Don’t rush to transition children from reading children’s books to ‘world classics’. The classics are appreciated for their exploration of complex human nature and the boundaries of civilizations, often nuanced by moral dilemmas. These themes pose a significant challenge to adults, let alone to young minds. Parents who push classics onto young children are often driven more by vanity – to boast about their children’s precocious literary tastes – than by genuine concern for their child’s literary development.

Educational value lies in love and the ability to love. Possessing the practical skills to sustain oneself through nature serves as the basis for this, as this is the capital of love and the basic qualification to love. Children need to gain firsthand experience living from nature.

If your ethics and values are not based on the ability to survive and thrive in an infinite, sustained relationship with nature, you may become lost in the narratives woven by authors and editors, shaped by ancient random values. Without the practical skills to guide you, reading the classics will only result in a deceptive kind of hubris, articulate but incapable of discerning right from wrong, unable to prepare meals, starving and crying every day.

Before delving into world classics, one must first understand the basics of labor and survival. Only upon this secure foundation can an individual grow a flourishing tree of knowledge and morally upright character.