Before you comment anything, no I’m not trying to make any kindergarten student read Nabokov.
I’m currently reading Lessons in Chemistry where for some reason every character including a dog is extremely intelligent and in the book I found out that a character studying in kindergarten wanted to read Nabokov.
Is it even possible even for the most intelligent kindergarten student to read Nabokov?
by Icy-Acanthisitta3299
7 Comments
Kindergarten-age savants are not versed in human emotion.
Give them a math book instead.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Back when I worked in early childhood, there were always parents bragging about how their kids were too smart for various activities in PK-2, and one of the things they’d say is how their kid can already read this or that book. It was usually something like Charlotte’s Web or Harry Potter. So you do get some kinder and 1st graders who can read quite well. But almost always this meant they could sound out the words and mostly follow the story. It rarely meant they had the emotional intelligence to grapple with the themes and experiences of the characters. After all, kindergarten is when you are learning to share, wait in line, not make yourself the center of attention, learn to anticipate your bathroom needs, learn that others have feelings too, plan your day- all these basic building blocks of interpersonal relationships. Even if you had an outlier genius child who could somehow handle the vocabulary and sustain the discipline to get through it, they would still need experience with reading to scaffold up to handling the sentence structure and experience with life to comprehend the emotions and plot etc. And regardless of all that, literally impossible they could get the humor, allusions, wordplay, etc.
There are children who can read before they enter school. As in, they know what letters are and that letters form a word. They may also know what meaning words have.
Is that the same as being able to read a book and understand it? In most cases, the answer would be no. The point is not necessarily raw intelligence, but it is experience. Even a smart kindergarten child has very little lived epxerience, especially when it comes to “adult” concepts. The same way you could give me an advanced math textbook. Technically, I can read it, but that does not mean that I would be able to understand the concepts presented.
Having read the synopsis of the book you are reading, I do not think that any statements regarding the intelligence of kindergarteners made within are meant to be a faithful representation of reality.
Thanks to my parents’ early encouragement, I was already an avid reader by the time I hit kindergarten. If you had put the text of, say, Pale Fire in front of me then, I could probably have parsed out the sentences so long as unfamiliar words were explained to me.
Would I have understood the emotional content, much less the subtext, of what I was reading? Of course not. Would have meant less to me than reading the ingredients list on cereal boxes. Which I’m told I loved to do.
So a kindergarten student is aged about 5-6? I learned to read at 3 and could read on my own by 4-5 (my mother taught me), but no, I couldn’t have read Nabokov at that age – I was reading Ladybird books and Enid Blyton. I was reading Jane Austen and Mark Twain by 8-9 but obviously I missed a lot and picked it up on later re-readings. I read earlier and read quality books earlier than anyone I have personally met (not meant boastfully because my mother taught me when I was really young, so I was lucky and also, I am sure there are prodigies out there who read earlier) and it would have been absolutely beyond me to read Nabokov at that age. Still, if I’d been a character in the book, I’m sure the dog would have helped me with the unreliable narrator, so it would’ve been fine
The most realistic part of Lessons in Chemistry was the talking dog.
There’s hyperlexia and it’s possible a profoundly gifted kid could read the text. That doesn’t mean they’d understand the themes.
I’m guessing your book was hyperbole.
My kids are all autistic and all gifted. I am in an online group for the parents of gifted and disabled children. It’s such a relief to have a safe space to talk about our children’s academic abilities without being accused of bragging. It’s not always a “gift” to be gifted. We’re all just desperately trying to meet our kids’ needs. There are a ton of behavioral challenges that go along with autism and giftedness.
There are children in that group that read at age 3. But the emotional intelligence would simply not be there.
Also keep in mind it’s harder to learn to read in English compared to a language with better phonetics such as Japanese.