This week, my class read the English Declaration of Rights as well as the Declaration of Independence. When we got into class, we turned in the questions we had for homework with confidence, feeling as if we have deducted all we can from the documents and thus firmly grasped what they had to offer. When classtime begun, I expected to move on to a new topic seeing as I thought we were done with this, but Ms. Castillo told us to tell her exactly what the documents were about. Right then and there, nobody in class could give a well said explanation about it. So I knew exactly what was gonna happen: We were going to go over it word through word. And I have to say, I was both bored and fascinated at the exact same time.
We learned new words, we grasped new subjects (learning how to do SOAPStone properly), and we got to understand the documents much easier. By the time we were done, we felt so confident as if we could write a score 8 essay on it (which is kind of pushing it seeing as the pressure of time is in the equation). But aside from gaining new knowledge on words and the purpose of these past documents, I for one felt a little spark on me that ignited from realizing one thing: I understood a historical document written in such eloquence that some adults today might possibly sleep to.
The importance of reading documents like these stems from the fact that they speak of topics that may be discussed today, but they are told from traditional times with a classic feel in its diction and purpose. We learn more about our future if we master our past when it comes to words. It is so much easier to read something simple like today's common book like "The Hunger Games", yet we panic when we are forced to read something as long and complicated as "Shakespeare's Hamlet", when that was technically the common text back then. When we in modern times read such sophisticated old works of literacy, we are able to gain a sense of scholarly nature and thus gain more confidence in ourselves when we strengthen our reading and comprehension skills. We read those old works so we can read the new works with a more flexible mind that can deduce so much more. The more we struggle to read from the past, the more we will be able to read peacefully in the future.
-Meghan Espinosa
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