One quiet afternoon recently as I was pondering an article advocating early reading instruction, I could hear my children playing hide-and-seek. They were shouting,  Ready or not you shall be caught!  I could not help drawing an analogy between the meaning of their childish rhyme and my feeling toward the growing tempo and insistence of demands to plunge preschool children indiscriminately into formalized reading activities. Unconsciously I paraphrased the rhyme,  Ready or not you SHALL be TAUGHT!  It had an ominous connotation smacking of pursuit, capture, and force and I began considering the problem in earnest

Farrow, Vern L.

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Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage ArtsVolume 4Issue 4 July 1964 Article 37-1-1964Ready or Not Should They Be TaughtVern L. FarrowWestern Michigan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizonsPart of the Education CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SpecialEducation and Literacy Studies at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy andLanguage Arts by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. For moreinformation, please contact maira.bundza@wmich.edu.Recommended CitationFarrow, V. L. (1964). Ready or Not Should They Be Taught. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 4 (4). Retrievedfrom https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol4/iss4/3READY OR NOT SHOULDTHEY BE TAUGHTVern L Farro wOne quiet afternoon recently as I was pondering an article advocating early reading instruction, I could hear my children playinghide-and-seek. They were shouting, "Ready or not you shall becaught!" I could not help drawing an analogy between the meaningof their childish rhyme and my feeling toward the growing tempoand insistence of demands to plunge preschool children indiscriminately into formalized reading activities. Unconsciously I paraphrasedthe rhyme, "Ready or not you SHALL be TAUGHT!" It had anominous connotation smacking of pursuit, capture, and force and Ibegan considering the problem in earnest.Anyone who has been sensitive to the increasing pressure to include reading instruction in the kindergarten curriculum cannot helpbut be concerned. This focus upon the preschool child has tended toequate him with some kind of strategic commodity or a secret weaponwith all of the ugly overtones of exploitation. And, what is moreserious, it has served to cloud the fundamental issue of what is bestfor young children. It has resulted in confusion over the true ends ofeducation and the nature and needs of preschool children.The advocates of early reading instruction support their claimswith research and there appears to be abundant evidence that veryyoung children have been taught to read. For example, Fowler (2)has recently reported success in teaching the alphabet, both upperand lower case, as well as a number of isolated words to his two-year-old daughter. He also reported some evidence of psycho-social disturbance but he was unwilling to attribute it to the reading instruction.Moore (3) of Rutgers University reported that he has taught morethan 100 children between the ages of two and five years not onlyto read but also to write, typewrite, and to take dictation. I have hadan opportunity to view motion pictures of some of his children inaction and the evidence of tension and anxiety among them wasdisturbingly apparent. Bonnema (1) obtained successful reading results with kindergarten children using a phonetic alphabet which shedevised. Along this same line, Downing (4, 5) has been employingthe Augmented Roman Alphabet since 1960 with striking results inteaching four and five year olds to read in England and Scotland. In108—rhaddition, there are literally dozens of similar experiments currentlyunder way throughout the United States and England whose subjectsare three, four, and five year old youngsters, all presumably meetingwith success. And yet, for all of this research activity, I continue toexperience nagging reservations.It seems to me that thoughtful educators must resist being sweptup in a premature groundswell by reports of precocious achievementswithout more evidence than is now available. We must objectively askwhether such achievements represent typical performance; whetherthey can safely be interpreted as evidence of intellectual maturity;whether early reading instruction is producing the crucial factor of"reading comprehension;" whether the physical, psychological, andattitudinal concomitants are beneficial. Current research tells us littlewith respect to these questions.It is true that today's preschool children appear to be more sophisticated than were children of a generation ago. However, we mustaskwhether this apparent superiority constitutes a basic change in childnature as we have known it; whether this apparent earlier maturitymakes obsolete our understanding of child growth and development;whether, indeed, it relegates to the scrap heap, the concept of readinessupon which we have operated for so long. Certainly systematic earlyreading instruction disregards our present beliefs with respect toreadiness.It is my personal feeling that the sophistication we see is moreapparent than real. For example, can we assume that because three,four, and five year olds incorporate references to rockets; space capsules; liquid-oxygen propellents; and other equally exotic terminologywithin their vocabularies and play activities that they deeply or evenvaguely understand these matters? Or can we assume that becausethey memorize literally hundreds of television commercials dealingwith micronite filters, analgesics, decongestants, and fluoride toothpastes, that they possess adequate concepts to match their eruditepronouncements? I believe that such assumptions are unwarranted.What we are more likely witnessing are the most accomplished verb-alizers in history.It is my considered judgement that the likenesses between today'schildren and those of a generation ago are infinitely greater than arethe differences. There is no reason to believe that anything has occurredin our streamlined, pressurized age which has changed the basic natureof children, altered the way in which children learn, or abrogated therh—109fundamental readiness characteristics which have been abundantlyidentified through research as constituting a sound foundation for successful beginning reading progress. Therefore, I am still convinced thatchildren need to develop or acquire these traits, skills, or stages ofmaturity before they are confronted with systematic, formalized reading instruction. Let me review briefly for you these readiness components. (1) Good general physical and mental health; (2) visual acuityanddiscriminatory powers adequate to deal with ourcomplex system ofprinted language symbols; (3) auditory acuity and discriminationadequate to deal with the intricate nuances of sound in our spokenlanguage; (4) a rather high degree of language development andfluency; (5) emotional stability sufficient to permit the child to focussustained listening attention and concentration upon the learning task;(6) social maturity adequate to insure effective group participation;and lastly, two factors of crucial importance, (7) a broad experientialbackground providing a rich store of concepts; and (8) a vital desireto read as evidenced by seeking behavior. You will note that I havesaid nothing about mental age per se. This is because there is noreal agreement concerning an optimum mental age for beginning reading, and furthermore I believe that adequate intellectual maturity isimplicit within the factors listed above.What implications should all of this have for educators whoseprime responsibility is the welfare and educational development ofchildren? I would suggest the following: (1) that we must keepabreast of research dealing with early reading instruction, evaluateit objectively and be willing to implement such programs if theyshould prove sound; (2) that we must provide for a continuing evaluation of our preschools to assure that children are being brought to astate of reading readiness as efficiently as possible within the frameworkof the principles of child growth and development; (3) that we mustmake provisions to identify genuinely precocious children and furnishthem with early reading opportunities; and finally that we mustactively interpret to the community the essential nature of the preschool program, with respect to reading, as a time of broad unstructured experiences in language aimed at clarifying and building concepts, developing skills of speaking and listening, and promoting thecreative use of language as children explore and learn to control theworld around them.Remember that the desire to read and write flows naturally froma felt need to communicate ideas, and that such a need cannot ariseiio_rfeout of an experiential vacuum. To paraphrase an old familiar saying,"It takes a heap of living before words become your own." I believeour preschool programs should provide for that "heap of living"unencumbered by formalized reading instruction.Bibliography1. Boyer, Helen, "England and America Compete: Phonemic Readersfor First Graders," Phi Delta Kappan, 44 (December, 1962) 123-126.2. Fowler, William, "Teaching a Two-Year-Old to Read: An Experiment in Early Childhood Learning," Genetic Psychology Monograph, 66 (November, 1962) 181-283.3. Moore, Omar K., Early Reading and Writing. Guilford, Connecticut: Basic Education Council (film).4. Downing, John A., "Teaching Reading with ITA in Britain," PhiDelta Kappan, 45 (April, 1964) 322-329.5. , "The Augmented Roman Alphabet for Learning to Read," The Reading Teacher, 16 (March, 1963) 325-336.Vern Farrow is an Assistant Professor of Education at WesternMichigan University specializing in Elementary Education with emphasis in Reading and the Language Arts. Prior to taking the Master'sDegree at Seattle University and the Doctorate at the University ofOregon, Dr. Farrow taught in both elementary and junior high schoolsin Seattle, Washington.

Ready or Not Should They Be Taught

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Ready or Not Should They Be Taught

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