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
Island and nearly three months to Ivanhoe, clearly it is something
other than reading that is being attempted. It is perfectly obvious
that the high schools are attending principally to the mechanics of
expression and not to the content of the expression. The relative
emphasis should be reversed.
The amount of reading in the high schools should be greatly increased.
Those who object that rapid work is superficial believe that work must
be slow to be thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow
work is often superficial and that rapid work is often excellent.
In fact the world's best workers are generally rapid, accurate, and
thorough. Ask any business man of wide experience. Now leaving aside
pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed that pupils will
acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits according
to the way they are taught. If they are brought up by the slow
plan, naturally when speeded up suddenly, the quality of their work
declines. They can be rapid, accurate, and thorough only if such
strenuous work begins early and is continued consistently. Slow habits
are undesirable if better ones can just as well be implanted.
To avoid possible misunderstanding, it ought to be stated that the
plan recommended does not mean less drill upon the mechanical side
of reading. We are recommending a somewhat more modernized kind of
mechanics, and a much more strenuous kind of drill. The plan looks
both toward more reading and improved habits of reading.
One final suggestion finds here its logical place. Before the reading
work of elementary or high schools can be modernized, the city must
purchase the books used in the work. Leaving the supplying of books
to private purchase is the largest single obstacle in the way of
progress. Men in the business world will have no difficulty in seeing
the logic of this. When shoes, for example, were made by hand, each
workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that elaborate
machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so
expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It is so in
almost every field of labor where efficiency has been introduced. Now
the books to be read are the tools in the teaching of reading. In a
former day when a mastery of the mechanics of reading was all that
seemed to be needed, the privately purchased textbook could suffice.
In our day when other ends are set up beyond and above those of former
days, a far more elaborate and expensive equipment is required. The
city must now supply the educational tools. It is well to face this
issue candidly and to state the facts plainly. Relative failure can be
the only possible lot of reluctant communities. They can count on
it with the same assurance as that of a manufacturer of shoes who
attempts to employ the methods of former days in competition with
modern methods.
In this city the expenditures for supplementary textbooks have
amounted to something more than $31,000 in the past 10 years.
Approximately one-third of this sum was spent in the first seven years
of the decade and more than $20,000 in the past three years. This
indicates the rapid advance in this direction made under the present
school administration but the supply of books still falls far short
of the needs of the schools. A fair start has been made but nothing
should be permitted to obstruct rapid progress in this direction.