within hearing already has the meaning fresh in mind from the previous reading.
The normal child cannot work up enthusiasm for oral reproduction under such
conditions.
- The paragraph is analyzed into its various elements, and these in turn are
discussed in detail.
Such work is not reading. It is analysis. A selection is not read, it is analyzed.
The purpose of real reading is to enter into the thought and emotional experience
of the writer; not to study the methods by which the author expressed himself.
The net result when the work is done as described is to develop a critical
consciousness of methods, without helping the children to enter normally and
rightly into the experience of the writer. The children of Cleveland need this
genuine training in reading.
Reading in the high schools needs very much the same sort of modernization.
There are more kinds of literature than classical belles-lettres, and perhaps more
important kinds. We would not advocate a reduction of the amount of aesthetic
literature. Indeed, the young people of Cleveland need to enter into a far wider
range of such literature than is the case at present. But the reading courses in
high schools should be built out in ways already recommended for elementary
schools.
The training, however, should be mainly in reading and not in analysis. The
former is of surpassing importance to all people; the latter is important only to
certain specialists. And, what is more, fullness of reading and right ways of
reading will accomplish incidentally most of the things aimed at in the analysis.
The following table of the reading outline of the High School of Commerce is a
fair sample of what the city is doing. Note how much time is given to the reading
and analysis of the few selections covered in four years.
TABLE 3.—WEEKS GIVEN TO READING OF DIFFERENT BOOKS IN HIGH
SCHOOL OF COMMERCE
Weeks to read
First Year
Ashmun's Prose Selections 9
Cricket on the Hearth 5