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KVOS Special: The First R

  • Good evening.
  • Have you ever stopped to ask yourself,
  • how does a person learn to read?
  • We often hear a great many glib answers to that question when,
  • but when you stop to think it over carefully,
  • you realize that how a person learns to read
  • is one of those great mysteries, as is any kind of learning.
  • However, we have discovered and developed
  • a variety of ways and theories and methods
  • of teaching reading.
  • Tonight, one of the leading experts in teaching reading
  • is with us.
  • He is Dr. Donald Durrell, professor
  • of English at Boston University in Massachusetts.
  • Talking with him is Dr. James L Jarrett,
  • president of Western Washington State College.
  • Tonight, you've been listening to a conversation between Dr.
  • James L Jarrett, president of Western Washington State
  • College, and Dr. Donald Durrell, professor of education
  • at Boston University in Massachusetts
  • and authority in the field of teaching reading.
  • Goodnight.
  • Dr. Durrell, I have the general impression, which
  • I imagine you share, that seldom in our history in this country
  • has there been as much interest as there is today
  • in the problem of reading--
  • in learning to read, and continuing to read.
  • And I should like to ask you a general evaluation
  • on your part, how well do American youth read today?
  • Well, fortunately, they can still read,
  • and I think they're reading better than they ever have.
  • It's a little hard to prove this,
  • except for the fact that colleges are more and more
  • pleased with the quality of people that come to them,
  • and are getting fussier and fussier about the people
  • they take in.
  • Also any types of measures we apply,
  • that we're used 20 years ago or 30 years ago,
  • versus today's youth will show a higher degree
  • of achievement of reading.
  • On the other hand, you still have
  • many schools in which the reading is rather poorly
  • handled.
  • You can't generalize for American schools,
  • because within the same 10-mile radius,
  • you're going to have reading taught very well--
  • must emphasize-- beautifully in one school system that's
  • more casual.
  • Or even the same building--
  • I recall visiting a school just before the school closed
  • in Massachusetts.
  • In the same building, one extremely
  • skilled first grade teacher, across the hall
  • another who was clumsy.
  • By the way, both were my graduates.
  • Well, I guess you're saying in the latter,
  • then, that this is not a matter of difference in methods--
  • one using one method, and another teacher
  • using another method, and that accounting for the difference.
  • But just something about the general skill of the teacher?
  • Well, it's how well the time is being used,
  • and whether the material is suitable for the child.
  • If you have a youngster that has no ear for sounds in words,
  • then he can't use phonics, and therefore,
  • if he doesn't get that help, he doesn't go.
  • A skilled teacher gives his help.
  • A child who is weak in letter knowledge,
  • doesn't know too much about this is given help immediately.
  • Some people, the child spends a lot
  • of time coloring six hens red, where another person spends
  • that same amount of time in reading several hundred words.
  • So there's a degree of intensity,
  • a degree of a suitability, a degree of fitting instruction
  • to the level of the ability of the child.
  • And these are a whole series of skill,
  • it's not just one technique.
  • As a matter of fact, there's so little difference
  • among the general approaches in beginning reading,
  • it's pretty hard to tell a difference.
  • Only the experts want to quarrel about
  • whether you do vowels first or consonants first.
  • I see.
  • It's very minor.
  • One does hear though, today a good deal of criticism
  • directed against the teaching of reading, particularly
  • as I read the popular literature,
  • against what is believed to be a neglect of phonics.
  • Are we today neglecting to teach pupils
  • to read so that they can pronounce
  • the words which they read?
  • One hears all of the stories about how
  • here is a pupil who has, in some sense, learned to read.
  • His eyes travel over the page, and he has some comprehension,
  • but you ask him to read aloud, and he is lost.
  • Or you ask him to pronounce a word,
  • and he pronounces it in some perfectly arbitrary fashion.
  • Now, is this a well-founded criticism
  • of a lot of the teaching today?
  • We had, in the 1930s, when some of the more idiotic
  • progressives were in charge of certain small numbers
  • of schools, a whispering campaign against phonics.
  • It had no standing whatever with the research men
  • or the men who were in the teacher education, that
  • had some concern about the realities of service.
  • And there's been never a colleague of mine
  • that I know of who's been anti-phonics.
  • As a matter of fact, most of us are constantly
  • looking to make phonics more effective.
  • But so many people think that any phonics is good.
  • The first 2,000 reading failures--
  • I've been studying reading failures since 1925--
  • and the first 2,000 I saw were in Iowa.
  • In those days-- '25, '27--
  • the children who were failing came through Beacon and Aldine
  • phonics, the cough and sneeze kind of phonics.
  • And they were reading failures, so the phonics
  • didn't correct them.
  • The trouble was, in their case, well,
  • that the youngsters didn't notice the separate sounds
  • in spoken words.
  • And it's a little hard to explain.
  • A youngster, in order to use phonics,
  • has got to notice the speech sounds.
  • And I brought along here--
  • this is one thing I did bring along.
  • Good.
  • Somewhere.
  • A way that you can tell whether a child has this ear for
  • sounds.
  • See, the phonetic work is so designed that he who speaks
  • should be able to read, but only if he notices
  • sounds in the words he speaks.
  • And many youngsters speak beautifully,
  • have high intelligence, fine speaking vocabularies,
  • but never noticed that the first sound in magic, many, machine,
  • had a "mm" in them.
  • They don't know whether it's "tuh" or "guh" or so on,
  • even though they've been taught phonics.
  • So one of the things that I regularly
  • do with a group of youngsters that are having trouble,
  • I will hand them these four letters, same back, front.
  • I've got a set for each one, because usually there'll
  • be five or six in a classroom early in the year, that
  • will have no work.
  • So I say to them, show me M, show me B, G, F,
  • and the children hold up the right letters.
  • I see.
  • And they've had a little phonics, you say, show me "mm,"
  • and up comes "mm."
  • Show me "buh," "guh," and this comes up.
  • Fine, they got the phonics.
  • Then you say, show me the first letter in this word--
  • fountain.
  • And up comes "buh" and up comes "mm."
  • They have no idea that fountain has a "ff" in it.
  • And this is many bright youngsters,
  • and more boys than girls.
  • And how do you go about correcting this?
  • How would you proceed to teach a student
  • that that F sound, as it actually occurs in the word,
  • is [INAUDIBLE].
  • Well, you have to--
  • first, it's a problem of identifying it.
  • And therefore, we go back to speech correction techniques
  • for this.
  • You to a child, say these after me, 5, 15--
  • and you watch the lips and the teeth--
  • 5, 15, half, thief, rough--
  • so they can feel it.
  • And that's one of the ways that some of the youngsters,
  • who have not gotten it yet, get it.
  • Or how an L feels.
  • Like, listen, lake, wall, tall, tell.
  • And they feel it.
  • You go back to speech correction,
  • just as if they had speech defects,
  • and then they begin to feel this.
  • One of the easiest ones, that's more dramatic for the kids,
  • is pin, pipe, paste, tap.
  • Just let me make sure I'm understanding this.
  • Are you saying that you do this for the average and normal
  • child just in the process of teaching him,
  • or are you talking [INAUDIBLE]?
  • Now, as to the first question, you
  • make sure that the child coming into grade 1
  • has this ability to notice "mm" in magic,
  • the "t" in take or ticket in the first week of the school.
  • If he doesn't, he can't use look-and-say methods,
  • he can't use phonic methods at all.
  • Because without noticing the sound structure in the words--
  • and about 1/3 third of your first graders
  • are deficient in this, and they are
  • the ones you have to land on and really work.
  • And this should be done in the first two
  • months of the first grade.
  • Well, now if it's--
  • If it's not done, the youngster is going to go through the year
  • and he's never going to catch out
  • that trick of the tie between the sounds,
  • because he doesn't know the sound
  • and he can't make the tie.
  • And this is the primary reason for our reading failures.
  • Well, if one starts learning reading that early,
  • in the first grade, it sounds to me
  • as if there must be something that
  • should go on before the child ever hits the first grade.
  • Do you have any suggestions to parents
  • about preparing their students for this traumatic experience?
  • I let parents alone.
  • I'm maybe alone in this.
  • But when I was 19, I gave lectures to mothers
  • on how to raise children.
  • But in 1933, when my first child was born,
  • I quit teaching child psychology,
  • because I think child psychology should be taught only by people
  • that have no children.
  • They can be sure.
  • And I'm grateful if parents send their child
  • to school with certain--
  • well, if a child knows the names of letters
  • before he comes to school, if he knows that this is an M, fine.
  • If he knows almost all of them know that this is O
  • and this is X--
  • those are ones.
  • And they learn a lot of the words-- stop, street signs,
  • school signs, all sorts of essential signs
  • you have to do nowadays.
  • And the television has tremendous amount
  • of impact, mostly ads.
  • After all, they play up letters on all kinds of television ads.
  • And so the child gets this.
  • And a child that comes to school knowing his letters
  • learns to read faster.
  • We can test this by teaching six words in the morning,
  • and then seeing how many the child remembers
  • in the afternoon.
  • The children who remember all of them
  • are virtually all youngsters who know their letters.
  • So if you can to help your child know the letters--
  • And this means all the letters [INAUDIBLE]??
  • Yeah, and also--
  • Not just an M and N, for instance?
  • Well, we're grateful if he knows the capital letters.
  • But if he knows the lowercase, fine.
  • But one of the problems in lowercase letters is this--
  • the n and h look a lot alike.
  • The stem is higher.
  • Of course, the ones that give the worst
  • trouble in lowercase letters all loops on stems.
  • We ought to have a more distinctive thing here.
  • And by the way, also one of the things too,
  • we use print rather than the cursive writing,
  • primarily because you want to diminish--
  • well, look, if this is an f, what is this?
  • Yes.
  • I mean--
  • Two separate [INAUDIBLE].
  • Two separate symbols.
  • Like if we start learning a foreign symbolism,
  • say Sanskrit or something like this,
  • and they had two ways of doing it,
  • it's lots harder than having one way.
  • So generally--
  • Or even the learning of German, for that matter.
  • We would rather not have to learn the script
  • at the same time that we're learning the language.
  • And so yeah, it's easier.
  • Although many youngsters get going in the grade 1,
  • immediately move over to this on their own,
  • even though you do this, because they think this is grown up.
  • I see.
  • And so they want to write like the grownups do.
  • And these are the ones who know these.
  • So if they know their letters before they come in--
  • as a matter of fact, the three and four-year-olds are
  • the first--
  • that's the age where they first show the desire to write.
  • And I let them write.
  • Look, there are quite a number of books that tell
  • parents don't teach reading.
  • It's a very, very delicate thing.
  • Now you don't believe this?
  • Nonsense.
  • You can read yourself and don't lie to the child
  • like you can't do anything wrong.
  • Because the child, anything you do, and the teacher's smart,
  • she can utilize to a good advantage.
  • I see.
  • And many youngsters force you to teach them to read at home.
  • You don't have much choice.
  • Because they bring words to you, or they
  • start writing and make you spell letters for them,
  • spell words for them.
  • And sure, go ahead.
  • That is, if you yourself know all the letters
  • and can read the words, why then help the child.
  • The only thing a parent can do wrong-- or two.
  • One, if the parent gets the books from the school
  • and ruins them for the child before the child gets
  • to the teacher, this is bad business.
  • Let the school's material alone.
  • The second thing, if the child doesn't
  • come to you for the lesson.
  • In other words, if you are driving the youngster
  • and then he begins to run away from you,
  • then you make reading distasteful.
  • And it's a little harder for him although he can get over it.
  • As a matter of fact, I think there
  • are quite a lot of things that could be done in kindergartens.
  • But I'm not enough crusader for that
  • because I find that whatever child brings to grade 1,
  • we know what to do for him generally.
  • Although one thing many teachers are not doing well enough
  • is the ear training and even letters.
  • We've had, by the way, a whispering
  • campaign from some odd source against teaching letters.
  • But every single study since the beginning of research
  • in reading shows if a child knows his letters and can write
  • them or can tell you what the names-- that that's an h,
  • that's an n, that's a p, and this is an m, and so on--
  • this always is advantageous in learning.
  • [INTERPOSING VOICES]
  • But for some reason or other, some people
  • are against it, as though it's some mysterious cult
  • that you should not do it.
  • I don't know why.
  • We get a lot of oddities in education.
  • Particular from people who've taught one child,
  • who had one course in psychology,
  • and they give you the true gospel.
  • Let's go back to the parents for a moment.
  • Now you're saying, if I understand you,
  • that though the parents shouldn't force
  • the issue, especially to make reading distasteful,
  • he should seize upon whatever interest the child has.
  • And I suppose you're saying the child normally
  • does have some interest in learning letters and so forth.
  • Suppose then that the parent has helped his child
  • to learn the letters.
  • What else?
  • Is there anything that he can do or might helpfully do--
  • for instance, about this matter of learning sounds?
  • Oh, that's a little tougher.
  • You can if you want to make a plan of it.
  • You saw about the Denver TV program
  • for parents on how to prepare your child for reading.
  • They scared me because it sounded
  • as though if you don't do this, your child's bound to be bad,
  • fail in reading.
  • But there they suggested that you place objects
  • around the room and play a game and have
  • a child bring a basket and say, "buh" and a ball and say--
  • this is contrived.
  • Too much for me.
  • But it's good.
  • You can do it.
  • Or on this table, I must confess that one
  • of my three daughters, who was quite obviously not skilled
  • in sounds about age three or four, we began to say to her,
  • I see things to eat that begin with "k"--
  • cookies, corn, cake.
  • This is kind of useful.
  • But I don't take it too seriously.
  • One of the other things, by the way,
  • though this is all beginning.
  • Obviously, parents who read newspapers, who have youngsters
  • read back to them, and who read stories to them at night,
  • and who go over picture books with them and so on,
  • they are obviously-- all this is to advantage.
  • And the youngsters or the families that memorize
  • poetry around the table, any kind of thing.
  • Any exciting reading.
  • Fathers that remember poems and do this.
  • It always gives a literary bent.
  • And I think it rather helps.
  • I was going to mention the matter of poetry too.
  • Around my household, we do a lot of rhyming--
  • not necessarily with the intention
  • of helping them with reading.
  • But I should think it might actually
  • afford some ear training.
  • Exactly.
  • It does.
  • They get some sounds in mind.
  • A lot of the Mother Goose rhymes and other somewhat high
  • alliteration so that you get a pressing with single sound.
  • All good, sure.
  • But I think probably more important
  • than the technical details of the anatomy of symbols
  • is this business of having an interest in books, and reading,
  • and library borrowing on the part of the parent.
  • And they're bringing up books with [INAUDIBLE]..
  • You think that is important--
  • Well, of course.
  • --to use the library?
  • Naturally.
  • Because if you don't, why bother to learn
  • to read if you don't use it?
  • And the key to fine reading instruction
  • is excellent use of reading.
  • Dr. Durrell, I'm now wondering about teacher education.
  • As you know, I have some interest in the subject.
  • And today at Western Washington State College,
  • we are certainly putting more emphasis
  • upon learning to teach reading than previously.
  • And there is more interest shown in the part of students
  • and returning teachers.
  • I'd like to hear you talk about this for a moment or two.
  • I know that you have been in the teacher education business
  • now for a long time, and certainly have some ideas
  • about the training, the education--
  • particularly of the elementary teacher-to-be,
  • or the one who is coming back for refresher work.
  • What would you say about this big subject?
  • Believe me, it's big.
  • That's all I'll say.
  • I suppose that anybody who is a professor of education,
  • particularly at reading, every year
  • tries some way to make his work more effective.
  • And I've been working at it a long while.
  • One of the big problems is that the teachers now
  • are not coming into colleges.
  • The teachers are coming from the homes.
  • nine out of 10 teachers, in many places,
  • are mothers and grandmothers.
  • So that what you do in the college now
  • my effect another generation, but now now.
  • And many of these women are teaching in order
  • to send their daughters to school.
  • And then the daughters teach until the first child comes,
  • and that's it.
  • So we have a constantly changing profession.
  • If we had a continuing professional group,
  • it'd be much easier.
  • Then what we do in the colleges might make a difference.
  • So that I think a large part of our service
  • has got to be off-campus, in-service work, done out there
  • when schools are in session, and done with demonstrations.
  • Because it's very difficult to convey by talk techniques as
  • involved as taking care of 30 children with differing
  • abilities, with different progress rates,
  • different levels, and different kinds of weaknesses.
  • You can tell about this, but this is merely
  • an evasion of the real problem.
  • You've got to be able to demonstrate it.
  • So I think that demonstrations by the professor
  • are going to be--
  • are very important.
  • And we do this.
  • And rather than simply giving the general principles.
  • So this should be done outside.
  • I think also that there's far more learning by the student
  • if he is teaching children at the time he's learning.
  • And therefore, we are now at our place rotating all our juniors,
  • 300 of them, through the clinic.
  • So while they're taking courses in reading with me,
  • they are tutoring children at the same time.
  • And I find this far more effective.
  • Do you?
  • I had this experience of teaching half my course
  • in reading before an eight-week bout of student teaching,
  • and half afterward.
  • The students came after the teaching just
  • loaded with questions.
  • And every question they asked me I
  • had answered in the course prior to the time they went out.
  • Yes.
  • But then it wasn't meaningful at that time.
  • Wasn't meaningful at all.
  • And this is one of our problems of teaching
  • before you're ready.
  • So I think that we've got to change
  • much of our professional education,
  • but not reading only.
  • A lot of it's going to have to be done through experiences
  • with children.
  • Education, I think, is going to become a laboratory subject.
  • And so we're going to see much of our psychology,
  • other courses, taught through laboratory approaches.
  • And I suppose that in part means that some of the teaching
  • is going to go on after the teacher has started to teach.
  • Well, I'm sure for you and for me, I
  • suppose I learn more each year than any of my students do.
  • Because I'm engaging in a number of studies,
  • and I can make a longer list of things
  • I'm ignorant on in my field than a student can possibly
  • who doesn't know he's ignorant.
  • So naturally, as long as you live in the moment
  • to the student, the more likely he
  • is able to tackle the problems of ignorance in the profession.
  • So we need a lot of research.
  • Sure, we don't know how to teach all these youngsters.
  • I should've said earlier when I said that some schools do very
  • well, some do badly, I think that our best approach
  • to improving reading is going to be in improving materials
  • of instruction, that are self-directing and
  • self-correcting.
  • I see.
  • So that you can broadcast those wider,
  • to make it easier for teachers to teach well.
  • I think we'll probably get farther
  • in building materials that make it easy to serve a child
  • well than by just telling him how.
  • I take it that among those important materials
  • are those afforded by the library.
  • I've heard you talk about the importance of the library,
  • maybe particularly for the advanced child,
  • the child who has made good progress.
  • The one thing, by the way--
  • He needs to broaden his experience.
  • I'm told here that you go in, that you have lots
  • of elementary school libraries.
  • In New England, this is one of the shames that we have.
  • Our elementary school libraries are very poor.
  • I see.
  • We have relatively few schools that
  • have a library in connection.
  • We depend upon 30 books being sent in once a month,
  • and other kinds of things which are useful.
  • Of course, in the smaller towns, your public library
  • is often very closely tied to the school
  • and is good cooperation.
  • But there's far too little in the way of library equipment
  • in the schools in our area.
  • The library then is the place the child
  • goes to go beyond the very elementary kind of reading.
  • Perhaps he becomes a [INAUDIBLE] reader.
  • That's where he learns to read.
  • You don't learn to read by having reading lessons anymore
  • than you learn to play the piano by having piano lessons.
  • It's the practice in between that makes the difference.
  • And so the youngsters who spend hours and hours in avid reading
  • are the ones-- that's where reading is learned,
  • that's where reading speed, that's
  • where reading vocabulary is expanded, by voluntary reading
  • with a high degree of interest surely.
  • Every good reader is a person who's read a lot,
  • and has used the library and found it exciting.
  • Dr. Durrell, I'm now going to make a complaint that I have
  • heard from many businessmen and employers of various kinds,
  • and that is about the applicants for secretary's jobs who come
  • to us who cannot spell.
  • Now I'm not in a position to generalize
  • about the extent of this, but certainly a casual observation
  • would reveal that there is a lot of very, very poor spelling
  • that goes on.
  • And it is a characteristic of a lot of people.
  • I'm sure that this is a subject that you
  • have given some thought to.
  • What about the teaching of spelling, the learning
  • how to spell?
  • Well, the problem, of course, is found in the fact
  • that English sounds have different spellings.
  • So we're going to blame it on the English language now.
  • Well, I think part, of course we can.
  • I'll just take for example--
  • it's so very easy to demonstrate the number of problems.
  • Frankly, I think the men who are worried
  • because their secretaries can't spell,
  • that means that nobody can spell in the office.
  • [LAUGHTER]
  • So the secretary can [INAUDIBLE]..
  • You have to have somebody that can spell.
  • Spelling doesn't correlate with intelligence.
  • It's bad because of the variable nature of English spelling.
  • The more you think, the less sure you are.
  • You ask a person, how do you spell a word?
  • And they say, I'll write it and see.
  • Then the next thing they say, if you hadn't asked me,
  • I could have told you.
  • Now I'm not sure.
  • Because of course, it doesn't follow any logic.
  • For example, those of us who work in this field,
  • you count words, you count sounds in words.
  • The linguistics boys are playing with this also.
  • But take the sounds, air.
  • How do you spell "air"?
  • Well, I'll turn to the board again.
  • The most common way you spell "air" in English
  • is A-I-R. And you can spell it, of course,
  • the second most common way.
  • E-A-R in primary grade words.
  • And the third most common way of spelling "air" is C-A-R-E.
  • Well now, how do you spell "air"?
  • You've got two choices.
  • What's the logic behind it?
  • There's no logic behind it.
  • You have to have an image behind each of these words.
  • So that actually phonics enables you to misspell words
  • correctly.
  • So this is one of the problems.
  • Well, you've now demonstrated it's
  • impossible to learn to spell well, I think.
  • No.
  • We've been playing with this quite a lot.
  • You have to teach in spelling.
  • You can't do it by symbolic analysis
  • or by phonetic analysis.
  • It's got to be done, we find, by imagery behind the word,
  • as though all words were homonyms.
  • Take this one.
  • Same one-- "pare."
  • You do it through a usage technique.
  • You say, well, which of these mean two partners?
  • And you have to have the image behind the word.
  • Not only the form of the word, but you've
  • got to have this evoke images, you see.
  • How about a pear-shaped person?
  • Then the image of E-A-R has to come to mind, you see.
  • And if you're cutting down things, paring a budget
  • or paring your nails-- because nobody pares budgets anymore.
  • Washington especially.
  • [LAUGHTER]
  • You can see my biases.
  • But at any rate, you have to have the other.
  • And consequently, it is the meaning and imagery that you
  • have to emphasize in spelling.
  • And so we developed quite a number of imagery techniques
  • to keep the meaning high.
  • And it's quite surprising that this level--
  • you see, part of the jokes we get in this field
  • are such things as this.
  • I'll see if I can think of one.
  • A long stair led to the lady on the balcony.
  • How did you get there?
  • Which kind of stair led to her?
  • I see, yes.
  • Or the duke found the duchess sitting on another pier.
  • There are problems there.
  • So really, you have to learn almost one word at a time.
  • [INTERPOSING VOICES]
  • Exactly.
  • And actually, the writing vocabularies
  • are not so awfully large.
  • Another one was, if a man has two pairs in his hand,
  • is he making salad or playing poker?
  • You see.
  • I see.
  • So the imagery has to be behind the word.
  • It is virtually a learning a word
  • at a time with the right image.
  • That's very helpful.
  • We must teach all these words as though they were homonyms.
  • Thank you very much, Dr. Durrell.
  • You're welcome.