Haggerty: The Ability to Read 



19 



we already have in regard to expression, in regard to the pupil's 

 use of language in speaking and writing. It is no less imperative 

 in reading and understanding. 



A second reason given for failure to improve in the upper grades 

 is that pupils reach their limit of improvement. There is probably 

 no ground for this argument. There is a wide range of possi- 

 bilities for increase of vocabulary, and children rightly environed 

 and rightly taught go on acquiring new words almost indefinitely. 

 Further, it seems possible to teach pupils of any age or grade of 

 advancement to improve very greatl}^ in the ability to read rapidly 

 and understandingly when once attention is given to the question. 

 It is easy to show that college students can be brought to a very 

 much greater efficiency by a very small amount of practice. 

 The plateau, if the period of decreased rate of improvement in 

 reading ability in school children may be so characterized, is 

 probably a purely adventitious one, the evidence of our inefficient 

 methods of training rather than a necessary consequence either of 

 the nature of the learning process or of the subject to be learned. 



A third reason advanced by teachers is that there is no time 

 to teach reading in the upper grades. This sets forth an adminis- 

 trative problem for which teachers are not directly responsible, 

 but one demanding serious attention from those who are. Can 

 it be possible that there is any single ability more important than 

 the power to interpret what one sees in print? Certainly spelling 

 and handwriting are far from being so important, and yet both 

 get places on the seventh and eighth grade programs. And what 

 facts or skills does a child get in arithmetic, or what knowledge 

 does he gain in geography or history that will compensate for 

 lack of training in the most fundamental of all the tools of knowl- 

 edge, the ability to read on the level of his possible range of 

 thinking? 



None of these reasons is the real one. The pupils of the upper 

 grades fail to improve in reading ability because the adminis- 

 trative officers of the school do not realize the importance of such 

 training, and therefore do not give it adequate time on the pro 

 1 gram, and because the teachers have not yet developed the methods 

 for teaching the art of silent reading effectively in the upper grades. 

 Let any superintendent say that we shall continue in the upper 

 grades to regard reading as of the same fundamental importance 

 as we do for the younger pupils and give it adequate time recog- 

 nition on the school program, and let his teachers set themselves 

 the task of developing in their pupils the power of rapid and 



