Take the Greed Out of Reading

Thank heaven for little schoolchildren. Especially those with reading problems that can mean big bucks for slick operators riding the crest of our current reading frenzy.

As most professional educators will surely agree, a perceived need for new methods opens the door to new textbooks and more money for our media conglomerates, just as a perceived need for new standardized tests plays into the hands of our test makers and test-taking coaches. As for new programs, are these not the mother’s milk of educational bureaucracies and university consultants? The more we taxpayers follow the money, the more reason we have to suspect the intentions of our current leadership, especially their reluctance to consider policies that worked well in the past for us.

Let’s return to public-domain large-print readers. Anyone who looks at a fifth-grade reading book published in 1920 will certainly be struck by how large the print is, quite apart from the high literary quality of the selections. And remember, these were used in big cities with a larger proportion of foreign-born residents than what we have now. Eight words in each line, 22 lines per page, characters almost as big as those in Reader’s Digest large-print editions--books like these, now out of copyright, will be five times cheaper than what we’re buying today.

Let’s go back to the memorization and recitation of poetry. Reading comprehension, like speech comprehension, requires recognizing who’s doing what to whom in each sentence, a skill that is best developed by memorizing poetry, along with diagramming subjects and verbs. Like spelling, memorization is a right-or-wrong task. A sonnet here, a couple of ballads there, maybe a few limericks--pretty soon our fifth-graders will be mastering new words each semester and becoming very, very proud of themselves.

Let’s cut back on homework. Apart from curvature of the spine induced by those dreadful knapsacks (unknown 40 years ago), homework assignments today involve far too much parental assistance, along with mechanical use of the Internet and CD-ROM tools. Hence they teach schoolchildren to cheat and to be cynical about the good faith of a society that preaches honesty and encourages its opposite. Once the bottom third in each classroom is identified, there’s nothing wrong with giving them improve-your-grade projects. But the remaining youngsters should have far more time than they now get to run, jump, sing, play and just be children.

There’s no doubt that low-cost policies like these invite rebuttal. One argument advanced against large-print books is that the children don’t need them because their eyesight is much better now. An argument advanced against poetry memorization is that teachers are opposed to it. An argument advanced in favor of heavy homework is that it encourages family bonding. The real objection behind these arguments is that nobody is going to make any money out of low-cost policies like those suggested here.

And make no mistake about it, our current reading frenzy is truly a big-money frenzy--big money for big businesses and big operators. And meanwhile it’s the taxpayers and schoolchildren who are getting ripped off.