What Should Children Read in School?

Abstract

I have glanced at the development of reading material from the days of the hornbook to the textbook of the present period. I have observed that the authors of the more recent readers substantially agree upon interest as a quality which should guide them in selecting reading matter; but that they do not agree either among themselves or?what is more serious?with the children as to what is interesting. I have also noted the increas ing dominance of the literary ideal in connection with reading material; but I have questioned the sufficiency of this ideal. As actually put into practice I have even questioned its appro priateness; and I have advanced the view that, since reading material is valuable because of its usefulness in teaching chil dren how to read, literature has no more inherent right to preempt the pages of our reading books than has geography, history, or science. The further consideration of what children should read in school is closely related to a consideration of methods of teach ing reading, especially methods of teaching silent reading. Such methods, it has been pointed out, must address themselves to the development of speed and comprehension?especially the latter. In most school systems, pupils begin the use of books by the middle of the first school year, and thus it is very early in the child's educational career that the question of selecting the right kind of reading matter confronts us. Remembering that our largest task, as we now conceive it, has to do with silent reading rather than with oral reading, and that in teaching silent reading we wish to develop rate and com prehension, let us in the light of these facts examine some first reader selections. These are taken practically at random from a pile of first readers in common use. Each one of them represents all the reading matter on a page of one of these books. 109