Monday, January 25, 2010

In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, what does Kit think about the texts the students read in school?

Kit finds the texts that the children at the dame school are required to read from to be extremely dull. Their main books are a set of "primer readers." These primers have selections of various texts inside. The texts inside the primers espouse Puritan values and ideas. Kit describes these texts as "dreary monotonous sermons." The young pupils also read the Lord's Prayer from their hornbooks. When writing, the students have to "[spell] out the gloomy text."


Feeling sorry for the students, Kit begins writing short phrases for them using their own names. She does this to make reading more enjoyable for them. She tries to recall how her own grandfather taught her to read when she was a child. The children love Kit's new way of teaching them how to read. They gaze at her hand and watch "every motion of her quill with breathless eagerness."

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