Evening star., 1955-05-22

terialS with a vocabulary OF TO-
900 words. then we have to
memorize 10000 words; If we
want to go to the 20.000-word
range, we have to learn. one by
one, 10000 words: and so on.
We have thrown $500 years of
civilization out the window.
You don't believe me? I as
sure you what I am saying is
literally true. Go to your school
tomorrow morning-or if john
ny has brought home one of his
readers, look at it. You will i'm
mediately see that all the words
in it are learned by endless repe-
;ition.
Not a sign anywhere that let
tiers correspond to sounds and
that words can be worked out
by pronouncing the letters No.
The child is told what each word
means and then they are me-
chanically, brutally hammered
into his brain. Like this:
"Quack, quack," said the duck.
He wanted something.
He did not want to get out.
He did not want to go to the
farm.
He did not want to eat.
He sat and sat and sat,
Over and Over Again
All the reading books used in
all our schools. up through
fourth and fifth and sixth grade.
are collections of stuff like that.
Our children learn the word sat
by reading over and over again
about a duck or a pig or goat
that sat and sat and sat. And
so with every word in the Ian
guage.
Every word in the language!
You know what that means? 1t
means that if you teach reading
by this system, you can't use
ordinary reading matter Tor
practice. Instead, all children
for three, four. five. six years
have to work their way up
through a battery of carefully
designed readers. each one con-
tanning all the words used in the
previous one plus a strictly linn
tied number of new ones. used
with the exactly right" amount
of repetition.
Our children don't read An
dersen's Fairy Tales" any more
or The Arabian Nights" or
Mark Twain or Louisa May Al
colt or the Mary Poppins books
or the DR.. Doolittle books or
anything interesting and WORTH
while, because they can't.
The writer's of these classic
children's books wrote without
being aware of our Chinese sys-
tenn of teaching reading. So
Little Women" contains words
like grieving and serene. and
tom Sawyer" has ague and in
wardly, and Bulfinch's "Age of
Fable" has nymph and diety and
incantations.
If child that has gone to
any of our schools faces the
word nymph for the first time,
he IS absolutely helpless because
nobody has ever told him how
to sound out n and y and m and
ph and read the word of the
page.
So what does he get instead?
He gets those series of horrible.
stupid, emasculated. pointless,
tasteless little readers, the stuff
and CUFF about Dick and Jane
or Alice and Jerry visiting the
farm and having birthday par
ties and seeing animals in the
zoo and going through dozens
and dozens of totally unexciting
children's activities that offer
opportunities for reading Look,
look" or "Yes, yes" or Come.
come" or "See the funny. funny
animal" During the past half
year I read a good deal of this
material and I don't wish that
experience on any one.
TomorrOw-FactOry Pro-
duced Textbooks. Who writes
them and how are they pro-
duced? What happened to a
famous scholar who said our
methods of teaching reading
were wrong?
From the book why Johnny Can't
Read" by Rudolf Flesch, copyright,
l951. by Harper e. Bros Distributed by
the Register and Tribune Syndicate.l