Читать книгу Teaching Children to Read - Paul Klapper - Страница 11
ОглавлениеPEDAGOGY OF READING
A. WHEN SHALL READING BE TAUGHT?
A popular question of the day among theoretical educators is when to begin to teach elementary reading. Their conclusions show remarkable unanimity, for writers like Dewey, Huey, Laing, McMurry, Mary Putnam Jacobi and Parker insist on the elimination of reading in the first three years of school life. One naturally questions their position. In the main their arguments are fivefold:
1. The Hygienic Considerations.—We saw the dangers of eye fatigue and eye strain in reading, how ill adapted the eye seems to be for the purposes that present-day civilization imposes upon it. Hence it is argued that the young child should be relieved of the attending physiological dangers in learning to read. But we must realize the inevitable fact that the eye must be accustomed to read, must learn to adjust itself to twentieth-century needs. If books were printed in accordance with hygienic prescriptions the attending dangers would be greatly minimized.
2. Psychological Considerations.—Those educators who insist that children in the first three years of the school course should not be taught to read base their position on psychological grounds. In the first place, they argue that coarser adjustments must be made before the finer ones, that the fundamental muscles must be controlled before the delicate peripheral ones. The muscles of the body in general, those in the arms, hands, legs, etc., should be made sensitive and ready to coördinate with the mind before we develop in the child the ability to attend to the more delicate coördinations. Their second psychological objection is that concrete knowledge must be acquired before symbols are taught. Hence the opponents of early reading insist, why not teach the facts of nature, of local geography, of industry, of manual work, before giving the symbols for thought-getting in reading. That bad mental habits are developed is another argument of this school. The child is too young to concentrate upon such work, hence mind wandering is encouraged, and the powers for application are undermined. These exercises in symbol interpretation are opposed to the cravings and interests characteristic of the young child, and there is constant aversion rather than attraction. A final psychological objection which these educators advance is that, with the very young child the whole process is an unintelligent one. The processes in reading are too difficult, and they hold that all mental activity goes to the recognition of symbols, rather than to the thought which they symbolize. They argue that this explains the frequency, among children, of expressionless reading, constant stumbling and word-reading, rather than thought acquisition,—in a word, the wrong habits of reading that defy the teacher’s effort.
3. Social Considerations.—These opponents of early reading tell us that for sociological reasons the prevailing custom of initiating the young child into the mysteries of symbols is unsound pedagogy. Life today, they argue, is industrial and manual. Bookishness is not a characteristic of modern social organization. Reading is too individual a process for the young child, whose life and outlook are intensely self-centered. We must teach the social duties and social relations of life. This seems an imposing indictment against our system of primary reading, but our very social life is the main justification for elementary reading in the beginning of school life. The efficiency of our mails, the universality of the newspaper, the multiplicity of worthy publications, the unprecedented facilities of the public libraries, and cheap printing make reading a positive necessity that must be answered as soon as possible. Reading and writing need not monopolize the first three years of elementary training; there need be no reading fetish. But withal, reading deserves an important place in these grades. It is inappropriate to apply the term, “bookishness” to such work. Once the child has learned to read, he has a source of infinite joy and rich culture. In spite of all that is said to the contrary, there is nothing individualistic in this pleasure. Reading is a very social process; it acquaints the child with the thoughts and the lives of others, and breaks the confining bonds of the child’s personal life.
4. The Culture Epoch Theory Against Early Reading.—This theory of recapitulation, when applied to education, has been interpreted to mean that each individual should be taken through those stages through which the race passed in its development. The early life of man concerned itself with the concrete; it knew only oral speech; man himself was ear-minded, not eye-minded, in language. Hence, these educators conclude that all language work in the early grades must be exclusively oral. While all these characterizations of early society are true, we must, nevertheless, realize that, to prepare the child for present and future life, we teach the needs of existing and not of past society.
5. Pedagogical Considerations.—The advocates for the postponement of the teaching of reading bring, finally, pedagogical considerations to bear out their contention. Why spend so much time and effort on a task that can be accomplished in less time and to greater advantage when the child is two or three years older? The child is a motor animal, with interests that are manual and practical. He turns from the early phases of reading because the work is too formal and lacks vital motive. Here, too, we find an array against early reading which is not as true and as far-reaching as is often supposed. True, reading can be taught the child of ten with greater ease than the child of six, but so can any other serious subject; therefore, why not postpone all school work? The child is a motor animal, but, despite this prominent characteristic, he has other interests as well. He is curious; he loves the story; he has a dramatic sense, a feeling for rhythm, etc. Although the child experiences no “personal hunger” for reading, the problem, approached carefully, need not be the arbitrary lesson it is made out to be. The love for the story, and the desire for the acquisition of a practical art, the social use of which the child sees daily in his immediate life, serve to motivate early reading lessons. By erroneous methods and unattractive devices, teachers often kill the vital interest which children bring to this work. This argues, not the postponement of reading, but a decided and immediate reform in methods of teaching reading. Despite the long imposing series of arguments to the contrary, the writer feels that reading should be taught at an age as early as the child will allow. Experience shows this to be about the age of seven. Reading is the “open sesame” to those ideals, inspirations and joys of the past, which have been crystallized in literature. The mechanics of reading entail a mastery of arbitrary and uninteresting symbols. The sooner the drudgery is finished, and we present to our children the vital elements of reading, the surer are we to implant an appreciation of true literature. A cursory perusal of the educational statistics concerning elimination and overage shows that an alarmingly increasing number of children joins the industrial and commercial ranks at the end of the sixth school year. If reading is postponed to the beginning of the fourth year, we shall send out a large percentage of the school population woefully handicapped. In the final view, the practical needs of the community, rather than subtle psychological analyses, must determine the organization of educational systems and their curricula.
B. BASIC AIMS IN READING
There are two contending conceptions that govern methods of teaching reading to children in the early grades. One strives to make reading a formal or mechanical process, the other looks upon reading as a cultural or educational influence. The method that a teacher follows gains its life and spirit from the point of view that she takes toward her work. Unconsciously she interprets every phase of her work in terms of it. We must, therefore, consider the contending viewpoints in teaching reading.
| Formal Reading. | Educational or Thought |
| Reading. | |
| 1. Reading must always be looked upon as an end in itself. | 1. Reading justifies itself only because it is a means to a higher end, viz., thought. |
| 2. Reading is a technical process, and as such is concerned with giving the child a mastery of the tools, the symbols, by means of which we gain thought. Aside from this technical ability the teacher of reading need have no other care nor concern. | 2. Reading must be looked upon as a process of thought-getting, of learning to express thought, of increasing one’s language stock. The mastery of symbols must be incidental and of subordinate interest. |
| 3. Since reading is a mechanical process, it must be taught as an arbitrary process through hard memory drills. No reason, no motive need be given. | 3. As a thought-getting process, reading must always start from a conscious need felt by the child. His love for the story, his desire to know how to read, will rationalize the work. |
| 4. To speak of getting thought without making reading a process of symbol interpretation is absurd. Children leave school hampered in their ability to extract the thought from the printed page because their knowledge of symbols, phonics, word analysis, etc., is so vague that the deficiencies in the formal aspect of reading make impossible progress in the rational. | 4. True, thought-getting is simplified and even made possible only in proportion as the symbols are turned into habit. But the child should begin by reading for thought. All technicalities must be based upon the work thus mastered. |
| 5. That the sentence is the unit of mental grasp, and the word the unit of visual grasp, if the oft-quoted law; hence a mastery of words must precede a mastery of the sentence. | 5. If the aim of reading is to develop the ability to extract thought from the printed page, and if the sentence is the unit of thought, then the child ought to be taught to read sentences first and then to master the words that make them up. |
| 6. Reading must be a synthetic process; begin with a study of phonics, phonograms, sounds; combine these so that the child learns to read any new word. Typical of the methods conceived in this spirit is the Gordon or the Pollard Method. | 6. Teach reading as an analytical process; the sentence must be mastered before the word, and the word before the phonogram. The McCloskey Method, The Farnham Method, The Aldine, The Progressive Road are typical illustrations. |
Conclusion.—Despite the sharp line of demarcation that each school seeks to draw, we see that neither has a monopoly of pedagogical wisdom. If we unite these two tendencies we evolve a composite method which insures thoughtful, expressive reading, fluent and smooth, and which also develops that mastery of the technique of symbols that is absolutely essential. A method must begin with thought acquisition. The text of this reading is analyzed and is made to yield material for the study of phonograms, which are basic in independent word recognition. In making our final recommendation for a modern, progressive and pedagogical method of teaching reading in the primary grades, we shall again refer to this standard.
SUGGESTED READING
Carpenter, Baker and Scott. Teaching of English, 75-80. Longmans, Green & Co.
Chubb, Percival. The Teaching of English, chap. V. The Macmillan Co.
Dewey, John. The Primary Education Fetish. Forum, V, 315-328.
Hosic, James F. Elementary School Course in English, 35-42. University of Chicago Press.
Huey, E. B. Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading, chaps. XV, XVI.
Laing, Mary E. Reading: A Manual for Teachers, chap. II.
Taylor, J. S. Principles and Methods of Teaching Reading, chap. IV.
