A Love of Books Engenders Reading

Re “Forget Test Scores; Teach Kids a Love of Reading,” Voices, March 2: Love of books and learning to read are not mutually exclusive. In my 20 years of teaching kindergarten in Central Los Angeles, the children I’ve taught have always responded to the books I’ve read to them and that have filled my classrooms.

Until recently, I had to buy them all myself, but our school library now has thousands of beautiful new books. Because of the reforms that have substituted systematic reading instruction for a curriculum based on vague theories of learning by osmosis, now my kids can actually read their books themselves, not just pretend to, and they love them even more.

In addition, books and computers are not an either/or proposition. The printing press was an invention of the 17th century, the Internet one of the 20th century. A hundred years from now, books printed on paper will be interesting antiques.

Victoria Brago

Los Angeles

*

“I didn’t know reading could be fun!” a struggling 14-year-old boy recently told me.

“Find me another good book,” requests a student who has just passed her first book test and tells me that she has never read a whole book on her own before.

“I want to try something harder to read next time. Can you help me?” asks an immigrant student.

After 30 years of teaching, the last eight as a credentialed librarian, I couldn’t disagree more with Regina Powers. The reading incentive program, Scholastic Reading Counts, has produced amazing changes in attitudes about reading at our school.

I wish Powers could see the joy in our students’ faces as they pass computerized comprehension tests on their selections and then run to check out other books from our shelves.

Kathleen A. Lasseter

Librarian, Walton Intermediate

School, Garden Grove