Learning to read and reading to learn
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... the reason for choosing this subject was because I find it so hard to believe that everything we touch is so political. The next generation is what is at stake here - not money and not class size.
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Folks, I recently asked a class of 38 students – all but one of whom were Post Secondary Enrollment Option students, which means that they are high school students taking college courses – how many have read a book other than school textbooks during the past year? The response was one student had read one book.
To be able to communicate well a person needs to have a broad knowledge
of our language. I have whole classes of very bright PSO students who struggle with simple multiple choice tests and hate essay exams. I tell them that they are the “cream of the crop,” and they are; but if they don’t read, they are going to be limited in what they can accomplish.
These students have passed the Ohio Graduation Test early in their high school careers and are now qualified to move on to college level courses. Please note that I did not say they were prepared. Nor did I say that our K-12 school systems are not doing their jobs. They are doing a great job of following the rules as laid down by the state of Ohio.
The K-12 school systems are doing exactly what they are supposed to do.
So, if people are not the problem, then it must be the whole system from top to bottom. The system must be the problem because we cannot blame the taxpayers. They want to know that their tax dollars are being well spent.
The taxpayers want to know that their schools and students are doing well, so they need a measuring stick. The state tests give them a way to evaluate. We cannot blame the test makers. They are building tests, one size fits all, which all schools across the state will be using.
They design one-size-fits-all tests regardless of the needs of any given local school district. We cannot blame the school administrators because their careers are based on how well the school as a whole does on the state test. We cannot blame the teachers because they themselves are evaluated on how well their students perform. We cannot blame the students; their goal is to pass the tests and generally speaking they do a good job achieving this goal. The same is true of parents if their children are passing state tests what is the problem. Maybe we think, “Is there a problem?”
Yes, folks, there is a problem. Reading! During the course of a year, I will have a total of approximately 600 different students in my classes. It has been more than 10 years since I observed a student who carried a dictionary. Once or twice a term, I will have a student who carries a laptop computer, and can look up the meaning of a word on the Internet.
The students today don’t read; not even the material in a textbook, so they don’t see words that they don’t know. There is a saying in our primary and secondary schools. In K-3, the students “learn to read” and then beginning with the fourth grade, the students “read to learn.”
Students who don’t learn to read well by the end of the third grade very rarely catch up with their grade level; and, therefore, are always behind in the learning of everything.
Most subject matter can be transferred from teacher to student. For example, a student can be taught the sounds that the letters of the alphabet represent. Then the student can be taught to sound out the letters in a word. However, reading is a skill that must be practiced and earned by the student.
The more reading a young person does the more words and thoughts there are in his/ her brain to catch and help understand new material. We have all had the experience of learning a new word and then seeing or hearing the new word several times right after the learning experience.
Well, we have read or heard the word before it was learned it was just that there was nothing in our brain to catch it. When I was in grade school in Sugar Tree Ridge, the principal at that time, Mr. Kisling, would bring books from the county library for us to read. The school itself was small and rural and did not have much of a library. Mr. Kisling’s students were lucky.
“The tax that will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1786.
Each class of preschool through third grade must be kept small, around 15 pupils, and each teacher needs an assistant. Each child needs to be given the one-on-one attention necessary to assure that they can read well – and love to read. (Parents and grandparents, you are also a big part of this.)
We, as a country, have always had the egotistical feeling, and rightfully so, that we can accomplish anything that we can set our minds to. So, let’s teach our children to read. This will allow us to compete with the world – and win.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,” Jefferson said.
Bill Horne is a professor at Southern State Community College and a columnist for The Highland County Press.
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