OCR Text |
Show Know Your Schools .... Some Major Causes Of Reading Failures By Supt. Rowan C. Stutz We need to face honestly this all-important question How do children and young people get into in-to the state of being poor readers? If there is anything that research shows clearly, it is that reading problems are caused. Children do not become poor readers because they are lazy. Many children who are poor readers do not have low I.Q.'s What, then, is the matter? The answer is not simple, but let us consider some of the obvious ob-vious facts of the problem. Most people are poor readers because they had a poor stArt in learning how to read. Particularly important import-ant is the first grade. It takes bright, well-trained men to be good baby doctors. And doctors are caring for only children's physical phy-sical health. We give our children, whose future, mental, emotional and social wellbeing depend on getting a good start in school, into in-to the hands of inferior teachers all too often. Let's put the inferior infer-ior and poorly trained, if we have them, where they will do less damage, and use our artist teachers in the first grade. Another factor in causation of reading problems is the lag be- tween what the best research has established as true and practice in the classroom. It is estimated that there is a lag of between forty and fifty years here. One of the most vicious results of this lag is that in many, many places all children are introduced to reading at the same time regardless of maturation. ma-turation. Researchers have been telling us for many years now that boys mature more slowly than girls. Yet we start them all to school at the same time and expect them to begin to read and from the same materials as if there were no difference in readi- ness. About the third grade the remedial classes in reading begin, and they average four boys to one girl. Many children profit greatly by a year of rich experiences exper-iences in which there is no attempt at-tempt to read. The interesting part about it is that when a child is not ready, he will catch up and even go ahead of the others at about fourth grade level. Research is very clear on this point. I am speaking, of course, about children chil-dren who are of normal intelligence. intelli-gence. Pre-school experience- of children varies that goes with-(Continued with-(Continued On Back Page) KNOW YOUR SCHOOLS. . . (Continued from Page 1) out saying, and this cannot be ignored. ig-nored. It is not until the child can be taught to see that reading is experience turned into symbols on the printed page that reading will have any meaning. One educator edu-cator says, "We read with what we have seen and heard and smelled and tasted and felt." Have you heard of the little boy who made the truly remarkable discovery dis-covery that "reading is just talk wrote down?" A child must, then, have meaningful mean-ingful contact with words in life situations. Another cause of reading read-ing failure lies in "social" promotion promo-tion dealt' with extensively in last week's article. Leaving a child in the first grade another year will not help him any more than passing him on to the second grade. But the teacher in the next grade must be willing to start with the child where he is when he comes to her. I don't want this article i to be all negatives. There are two positive pos-itive areas that concern us all. The first one is understanding what science has to tell us about children. Unless a teacher knows children, she cannot be a good teacher of reading. Learning to read is an individual matter and not an assembly line. The second positive suggestion is as vital as the first. Children must have books if they are going to be good readers. The efforts of all of us are needed to help provide adequate libraries in our homes, schools and communities. It seems that here an old story that has a moral is applicable. There was once a villarge built on a steep mountainside. Children had fallen over the cliff for generations gen-erations and had been hurt some of them had been crippled for life. This was thought of as sad but inevitable. There came a dav when a group of pregressive citizens citi-zens said, ' "Let's build a hospital at the bottom of the cliff to take care of the seriously injured." It was done, and the hospital was a source of great pride, and some bones were mended; but where injuries in-juries were too severe, the patients pa-tients were discharged as incurable. incur-able. Finally a member of the community who had been studying study-ing the situation .said, "Why don't we build a fence at the top of the cliff to keep people from falling fall-ing over?" There were protests from the doctors and nurses who had been trained to care of fractures frac-tures and concussions, but the I fence was built. And now you may draw your ojn moral! In our reading programs it is time to start . building fences not hospitals. |