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Te Ao Hou, December 1962, Page 57

in about six months and we would probably never need to learn any more, not for every-day purposes, that is. But the kind of knowledge we get by reading, that goes on forever. History? Read a book. How people live in China? Read a book. How to grow pumpkins? Read a book. How to build a house, bake a cake, travel from Auckland to Wellington? Read a book. To understand more about ourselves and other people? Read books, books, and more books! Do you see why I think reading is so important? Very well. But to do all these things the school has to have a very carefully worked out programme. Teachers are very conscious of this and all the time they are trying to keep up with new ideas about teaching children to read. At an evening course in Auckland recently, more than eight hundred teachers attended each night. Every class has an important part to play in the reading programme but in general the upper Standards are trying to do two things. They are trying to keep children's interest in reading high (they have to compete against radio, T.V. and pictures to do this), and they are trying to help children to find out the meaning of what they read.