Conservation of children's abilities through reading

Abstract

Conservation, as we have commonly come to consider the term, means the protection and development of our natural resources. Conservation of children's abilities through reading, then, might be taken to mean the protection of children's native abilities through an approach to reading which would initiate the child into the reading activity as naturally and informally as he was taught to walk or talk. Such a program would imply a belief on the part of the school in the theory that reading is not a separate study, but a tool to be acquired in the simple maturation process of every individual if he is to be a well-adjusted, useful member of society. Reading in life is not an isolated activity, but is intrinsically bound to life needs-to find out, to make, to do, to enjoy. The child's ability to progress from grade to grade is conserved through reading knowledge, and increasingly the prediction of his success in life is dependent upon the development of reading power. Every teacher is familiar with the negative reactions of the nonreader indicating a loss of confidence and self-respect and a growing sense of inferiority to other children of his own age. No less distressing is the knowledge that such maladjustments often are parent, or teacher, or school administration made. Further, there are data to prove that more failures occur in the first than in any other grade, and that these failures are directly traceable to difficulties encountered in learning to read. Likewise in the second and third grades, nonpromotions are largely the result of failure in reading. So acute are the reading problems of thousands of students in high school and college that we find them enrolled in special remedial classes earnestly trying to solve their difficulties with reading in order that they may continue their education, to say nothing of the thousands of boys and girls who, realizing their handicap, have become discouraged and given up at a lower level of educational achievement than their initial abilities warranted.