LEARNING TO READ.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 14

LEARNING TO READ.

MODERN METHODS.

The number of children of the socalled educated classes who at the age of seven or later are unable to read strikes one as a reflection-less on the general intelligence than on the educational methods used. Great care nowadays Is taken to teach children the sounds instead of the names of letters, and there are the various at, et, it, ot, ut exercises which the newer children are expected,: to digest. But it is no uncommon thing to hear anxious mothers say: "Oh, she can nearly read," the "she" in question having reached the advanced age of seven or eight. To read at five nowadays is considered almost the accomplishment of a genius, instead of being a more or less normal thing. Possibly reading and writing are not the aims of education, but the fiction still obtains that they are important. This being the case and the child suffering from considerable disadvantage later by the retarding of his reading potentialities, it would seem as though the at, et, it, ot, ut method might be looked into. In the first place, it if? much less interesting than the '"fat cat which the child knows as a reality. In the next, childish reason and possibly childish phonetics are not as necessarily developed as is his sight or perhaps his hearing. Children follow books that are read to them so that they know the shape of the word "the" or "and," and nobody at all can read fluently merely by spelling out words.

When people learn shorthand they "read back" most successfully by the look of an outline. Children who follow reading, and there are many learn almost without knowing it, and they learn visually. At least, the fact remains that the old, bad way of teaching, with merely names for letters, enabled children to read at a considerably earlier age than is at present the case.