Summer Reading Assignments and James F. Cooper's "The Pioneers"

 Summer Reading Assignments and James F. Cooper’s The Pioneers

by James Lisk 

June 2, 2025

 

I was excited to start first grade. My mother said I would learn important things in “real school”. Kindergarten had been playing, singing the alphabet, and music sessions; sessions where the other kids always got the shiny cymbals and I got the dull wood sticks. First grade was going to be different and I had questions; questions my mother could not answer. I wanted to know why the sky was blue, why my toy gyroscope didn’t fall over when spinning, how birds could fly, why a magnet picked up a nail but not a penny, and how a light bulb worked. That first school day I eagerly sat on the front row, only to get moved to my assigned seat. The teacher read “See Spot run. See Jane run.” while pointing to each letter and describing the sounds they made; repeating what my mother had taught me years before. The second day, I sat on the back row and started to look for distractions, but got moved to my assigned seat.

Later, I found exciting distractions in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, or better yet via the exploits of James T. Kirk and Spock (thank you, Gene Roddenberry). And some answers I wanted were in the World Book Encyclopedia.

When The Pioneers reading assignment came, I thought “Shouldn’t the Science and Math school have a science or math summer reading assignment? Or maybe a biography of an accomplished scientist or inventor? Something that will help me become a scientist?” But I was determined to get ahead and complete this assignment, so I read the book. It seemed so irrelevant to me.

Years after finishing The Pioneers, three specific impressions remain: 1) the way the towns folk made sport of killing as many passenger pigeons as they could; 2) a description of harvesting sap from maple trees in a way that killed the trees; and 3) the repeated references from teachers and administrators that we, the first students at NCSSM, were Pioneers.  The Pioneer, it appeared had been selected to be our mascot. And Pioneers, after surviving starvation and freezing, were unable to maintain the abundance that later surrounded them.

Walking to E.K. Poe elementary school for meals at the start of the school year, I could have pondered over the scarcity of good food and adult sized chairs for us Pioneers. But no, I was too engrossed in the abundance of other students who were loaded with their own questions about how the universe works.