Very little of it has any conscious
relation, immediate or remote, to present-day problems and conditions
or with their historical background. Probably children should read
many more selections of literary art than are found in the textbooks
and the supplementary sets now owned by the schools. But certainly
such cultural literary experience ought not to crowd out kinds of
reading that are of much greater practical value. Illumination of the
things of serious importance in the everyday world of human affairs
should have a large place in reading work of every school.
It is true that the supplementary sets of books have been chosen
chiefly for their content value. Many are historical, biographical,
geographical, scientific, civic, etc., in character. On the side of
content, they have advanced much farther than the textbooks toward
what should constitute a proper reading course. Unfortunately, the
schools are very incompletely supplied with these sets. If we consider
all the sets of supplementary readers found in 10 or more schools, we
find that few of those assigned for fourth-grade reading are found in
one-quarter of the buildings and none are in half of them. The same is
true of the books for use in the fifth and seventh grades. Some of the
books for the sixth and eighth grades are found in more than half
of the buildings, but there is none that is found in as many as
three-quarters of them.
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