CHILDREN'S READING AS A HELP IN TRAINING CHARACTER

Abstract

In the Arabian Nights' Entertainments there are thrilling stories of keys and of words that open secret doors to magic realms. Teaching a child to read has long seemed to me as magic and symbolic an act as any chronicled in wondertales. For in teaching a child to read you've given him a key to open unknown doors and enter magic lands. And, strange to say, you never know what may happen. Of two little sisters I taught to read, one simply threw aside the key and plunged forgetfully into athletics, learning to swim, row, skate. other grabbed the key of reading and started on so swift a run down into the land of story and poetry that I got out of breath trying to keep up with her demands for more books. This child is like the far-famed goat of comic journals. She will devour anything within two printed covers. At the age of eight she has begun herself to write a bulky volume, entitled, The Thankful Dog and many other stories. A child like this easily drifts into reading poor stuff unless teachers, librarians, and parents hurry to help her choose. I write this paper largely in her honor. She is born a reader. There are others, however, and important ones too, who achieve reading, and still more who quite unwilling have reading thrust upon them. For the sake of all children, then, I take as my subject Children's Reading as a Help in the Development of Character. I shall not ask what children do read except as a guide to their interests at a given age. Some children, left to themselves, will eat anything from green pickles to green soap, so some children will read anything from yellow journals to yellow fairy books. Our privilege as teachers is to feed them with nourishing food—food that passes through muscles and sinew into will and deed.