Looking At Reading In Our Schools Today

Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 60, 3 August 1965, Page 7

Looking At Reading In Our Schools Today

Whai is the basic problem of reading in New Zealand schools, asks Mr P. H. Jones, of Taupo, in a series of articles in which he attempts to answer just this problem. This is the third of the series:—

Study notes by the department say the greatest causes of failure is teaching children to read books that are too difficirtt; but Lord Cobham said it is wrong to make work too easy because its true purpose is to aequire self-discipline. Can parents be blamed

for not knoiving whether reading should be based on phonics, pictures, clues, cvontest, or intelligent gnessing? Horace Mann, and later Professor Walcutt, pointed out that the phonics system made the children recognise more words than they could

understand or would use. So condemnation was made of the system instead of the material. Professor Gates, of Colum- . bia, suggested that children recognise words by clues, such as the y tail on "Monkey." But recognition by visual means caused errors, familiar to all teachers and difficult to eradicate, as "stop" for "spot" and "gril, piont, holiday, cahir," where letters are right but order wrong. V OCABUL ARY CONTROL To prevent overloading of the memory "basal readers" were used limiting words to perhaps 235 embedded in 7257 words of text. They were called by Professor Trace "dull, insipid, trivial, inane and pointless," and by "Time" "little red hen types." Our "Janet and John," (according to Sylvia Ashton Warner "an allegedly scientific reader") was described by an inspector, after its fall from grace as "Nambypamby darlings who do not ring a bell in the mind of the New Zealand child." i FALLEN The Bishop of Auckland said: "The curtain has fallen on Janet and John . . . a ( good thing that the new 1 aooks have a New Zealand background; but let's hope ( that the total effect is elevating." One wonders why experts Bxcept such trivial material -alled by Dr. Plesch "hor^ible, emasculated, pointless and tasteless." (To Be Continued)