What the Schools Teach and Might Teach | Page 6

seventh, or eighth-grade student ought to be able to read
all the materials supplied his grade, both reading texts and all kinds of
supplementary reading, in 40 or 50 hours. He ought to do it easily in six
weeks' work, without encroaching on recitation time. He can read all of
it twice in 10 weeks; and three times in 14 weeks. After reading
everything three times over, there still remain 24 weeks of each year
unprovided for.
The reply of teachers is that the work is so difficult that it has to be
slowed down enough to consume these 24 weeks. But is not this to

admit that the hill is too steep, that there is too much dead pull, and that
the materials are ill-chosen for practice in habits of rapid intelligent
reading? It is not by going slow that one learns to go fast. Quite the
reverse. Too often the school runs on low speed gear when it ought to
be running on high. The low may be necessary for the starting, but not
for the running. It may be necessary in the primary grades, but not
thereafter for those who have had a normal start. Reading practice
should certainly make for increased speed in effective reading.
The actual work in the grades is very different from the plan suggested.
In taking up any selection for reading, the plan in most schools is about
as follows:
1. A list of the unusual words met with is written on the blackboard.
2. Teacher and pupils discuss the meaning of these words; but
unfortunately words out of the context often carry no meaning.
3. The words are marked diacritically, and pronounced.
4. Pupils "use the words in sentences." The pupil frequently has nothing
to say that involves the word. It is only given an imitation of a real use
by being put into an artificial sentence.
5. The oral reading is begun. One pupil reads a paragraph.
6. With the book removed, the meaning of the paragraph is then
reproduced either by the reader or some other pupil. This work is
necessarily perfunctory because the pupil knows he is not giving
information to anybody. Everybody within hearing already has the
meaning fresh in mind from the previous reading. The normal child
cannot work up enthusiasm for oral reproduction under such
conditions.
7. The paragraph is analyzed into its various elements, and these in turn
are discussed in detail.
Such work is not reading. It is analysis. A selection is not read, it is
analyzed. The purpose of real reading is to enter into the thought and
emotional experience of the writer; not to study the methods by which
the author expressed himself. The net result when the work is done as
described is to develop a critical consciousness of methods, without
helping the children to enter normally and rightly into the experience of
the writer. The children of Cleveland need this genuine training in
reading.
Reading in the high schools needs very much the same sort of

modernization. There are more kinds of literature than classical
belles-lettres, and perhaps more important kinds. We would not
advocate a reduction of the amount of aesthetic literature. Indeed, the
young people of Cleveland need to enter into a far wider range of such
literature than is the case at present. But the reading courses in high
schools should be built out in ways already recommended for
elementary schools.
The training, however, should be mainly in reading and not in analysis.
The former is of surpassing importance to all people; the latter is
important only to certain specialists. And, what is more, fullness of
reading and right ways of reading will accomplish incidentally most of
the things aimed at in the analysis.
The following table of the reading outline of the High School of
Commerce is a fair sample of what the city is doing. Note how much
time is given to the reading and analysis of the few selections covered
in four years.
TABLE 3.--WEEKS GIVEN TO READING OF DIFFERENT
BOOKS IN HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE
Weeks to read First Year Ashmun's Prose Selections 9 Cricket on the
Hearth 5 Sohrab and Rustum 3 Midsummer Night's Dream 6 Ivanhoe
11
Second Year Autobiography of Franklin 7 Idylls of the King 10
Treasure Island 7 Sketch Book 7 Vision of Sir Launfal 3
Third Year Silas Marner 7 Iliad (Bryant's--4 books) 5 Washington's
Farewell Address 5 First Bunker Hill Oration 6 Emerson's
Compensation 5 Roosevelt Book 6
Fourth Year Markham's The Man with the Hoe 2 Tale of Two Cities 10
Public Duty of the Educated Man 4 Macbeth 11 Self-Reliance 6
When a short play of a hundred pages like Macbeth requires nearly
three months for reading, when almost two months are given to
Treasure