portant than being failed at yearend is the daily and cumulative frustration that seeps into all aspects of the poor reader's waking hours. The commonest view that a poor reader holds of himself is "I'm dumb." He has a total sense of worthlessness that is unhealthy, debilitating, and frustrating. Many such youngsters turn to disruptive behavior in school, then truancy. Roman states that in tracing the course of the development of an individual's behavior, it is not unusual to find the triad: reading retardation, truancy, delinquency. Of course, many children with reading disabilities do not become delinquents and some delinquents are skilled readers, but the association of reading difficulty and delinquency is high. Roman found that 84 percent of the cases carried by the Manhattan Children's Court Treatment Clinic show reading retardation along with personality disorders and delinquent behavior. Fabian (reported in Roman) in a study of the amount of reading disability in various settings found about 10 percent reading disability in a public school group, 73 percent in the population of a psychiatric hospital children's ward, and 83 percent of predelinquent and and delinquent children.5 About 80 per Many studies have shown that delinquents are poor readers. cent of the Red Wing (Minn.) State Training School boys are reported to be 1 or more years below grade in reading. Forty-five percent are found to be 3 years or more deficient in reading skill. Over one-third of the inmates of the Hennepin County (Minn.) Home School for Boys are 3 or more years retarded in reading." At present only about 60 percent of children who reach fifth grade go on to graduate from high school. The people who drop out of school are most frequently found to be those who have not learned the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Penty stated that 60 to 70 percent of the reasons for high school dropouts are directly related to school factors, primarily that of mass teaching in programs designed to produce graduates all stamped out of the same mold. She found that the most common reason for dropout was academic failure. Youngsters who drop out of school, often at 14 or earlier, usually have a history of minor misbehavior. They are completely untrained for any vocation and largely unskilled in the rudiments of reading and writing. Usually they show at least minor personality disorders. With the continuing decline in unskilled jobs these young people have nothing to sell in the job market. The tremendous reduction in demand for unskilled workers and increasing demand for skilled people is a distinct trend of the economy. It means that uneducated youth will have an increasingly difficult time obtaining employment of any kind. Even in an economy that has need for many unskilled workers, such youngsters are poor risks because of their lack of even the simplest skills, coupled with an unfortunate attitude about work. Frustration and bitterness mixed well with idleness is an exact recipe for juvenile crime. WHAT SCHOOLS CAN DO BY WAY OF PREVENTION AND CORRECTION We must recognize that the majority of delinquents are excluded from special classes for mentally retarded, yet have difficulty competing with their brighter classmates in a normal classroom situation. The youngster with low reading skill and low mental ability is in a particularly vulnerable position. In all areas of the school curriculum he will find it difficult, if not impossible, to succeed. While the IQ is typically a predictor of sucess in verbal skills, and thus predicts quite well for the standard academic curriculum, we know that many of these children might be low in linguistic skill and in dealing with abstract concepts but often show much higher levels of skill in dealing with tasks of a con M. Roman, "Reaching Delinquents Through Reading," Springfield, Ill. Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1957. A. Fabian, "Reading Disability-An Index of Pathology," paper delivered to American Orthopsychiatric Association Conference, 1954, unpublished. Reported in M. Roman, "Reaching Delinquents Through Reading." C. J. Hertensteiner, Remedial Reading Status Report to A. W. Day, Minnesota Youth Conservation Commission (mimeograph), February 1961. H. J. Rogge, "A Study of the Relationships of Reading Achievement to Certain Other Factors in a Population of Delinquent Boys.' Unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1959. 8 National Education Association, "High School Dropouts," Research Bulletin, 38: 11-14. 1960. Ruth Penty, "Reading Ability and High School Dropouts," Teachers College, Columbia University Press, 1956. crete physical nature.10, 11 Langman has hypothesized that the reading disabled child is of this type also, responding best socially and academically to concrete, simple directions, specific to each situation.12 There is reason to believe that a substantial number of the delinquent population do not find it possible to learn in the standard academic curriculum with the standard techniques and approaches. They do not because their attitudes and goals are not middle class, thus not in keeping with the materials of the schoolroom nor the understanding of the teacher. They do not because the heavy load of abstract thinking of typical schoolwork is not suited to the way their minds work. They do not because most vocational programs have moved to such highlevel demands on the pupils that a verbally dull-normal pupil cannot even get in them. The corrective step would seem clear. There should be available to all such youngsters a work-study program designed to prepare them for the subculture in which they are going to live. Such a program would combine vocational training and job experience with continued development of basic school skills necessary for these semiskilled and skilled vocations. Within the context of education for immediate and practical vocational goals, rather than college preparation, the reading, writing, and arithmetic skills will take on much more meaning for such youngsters. Since, at the outset, these pupils will be too limited in reading and study skills to succeed in the standard programs of preparation for skilled vocations, there will need to be programs developed at the lower levels of verbal-abstract proficiency. Truck driver, mechanic's helper if not mechanic, farm and conservation work, bakery, laundry, service station, restaurant and similar services, along with the skilled trades of carpentry, plumbing, decorating, etc., might be considered. The list of possibilities is certainly sufficient for the task; there only needs to be a desire and a demand that this use of occupations, in formal cooperation with education, for educational ends, be accomplished. It is assumed that the teachers involved would have to be highly proficient in the teaching of elementary school skills. As preventive measures, even before the youngsters get into junior high school where work-study programs might begin, there are several things important for the schools to accomplish. For those primary grade pupils who show higher performance than verbal-abstract skills, there should be an immediate emphasis on use of concrete, manpulative materials, and simple specific directions throughout the curriculum. We need to start at first grade level doing differentiated teaching. When the pupils show failure in a standard basal reader program the usual action is to teach the same program over again-but more intensively. What is suggested here is that the teaching be differentiated by reducing the amount and quality of verbal content, with a parallel increase in the concrete manipulative, feeling, and touching and doing share of the instructional time. The goals may remain the same, but the teaching approach is different. An experiment with a curriculum emphasizing concrete experience, realistic vocational preparation, a socialization process within the reach of the child, and special psychological services to provide individualized teaching would go far toward eliminating that part of delinquency caused by situational stress in home and school. Additionally, it may well make significant inroads in the prevention and correction of delinquency from other causes. By the time the child reaches school, his basic personality traits have already been formed, and many of the incipient and active tendencies to delinquency and waywardness have been well established. Moreover, even though the school can supervise the child for a major portion of his active day, it must contend with continuously operating factors in the community and the home, which may militate strongly against any effective procedure for the child's welfare that the school attempts to institute. The primary function of the school is still educational in the restricted sense: it imparts knowledge and intellectual and reasoning skills to enable the child to make practical adjustments to the type of world and community he will live in. Even in the recent trend toward "character 10 Carl Rogers, "Client Centered Therapy." New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1951. 11 I. Schulman, "The Dynamics of Certain Reactions of Delinquents to Group Therapy," International Journal of Group Therapy, 4: 34-43, 1952. 12 Muriel P. Langman, "The Reading Process," Genetic Psychology Monographs, 62:3–39, 1960. education," the school is limited to certain types of formal procedures, usually applied in mass fashion, which may have but little value in helping a child overcome his emotional and behavioral difficulties.-Bloch and Flynn in "Delinquency: The Juvenile Offender in America Today." EXHIBIT P [From the American School Board Journal, March 1960] How To FINANCE ADULT EDUCATION (Henry M. Gunn, Superintendent, Palo Alto, Calif., Unified School District) As Americans by the millions are turning to public school adult education programs to further their lifelong learning, boards are asking: "How are we going to pay for it?" Here is a basic consideration of the responsibility for this financing on the local, State, and Federal levels. People everywhere are beginning to learn that they don't dare stop learning. Maybe a generation or so ago they could forget about education once they had a diploma or two carefully framed and conspicuously displayed. But not now. Not in this kaleidoscope kind of world. Now it's a matter of either lifelong learning or mediocrity. Americans by the millions are turning to public school adult education programs for their learning needs. And as adult enrollments surge upward, harried school boards and administrators ask the same questions: "How are we going to pay for it?" As usual, a blanket answer just doesn't work. Local problems demand local action. But school systems do have three problems in common. Solve these and we may be well on the way to solving the financial problem : 1. What responsibility should the local district have for establishing policy and paying for the adult education program? 2. What is the role of the State government in financing and setting standards for adult education? 3. Should the Federal Government assume responsibility in the adult education field? LOCAL SUPPORT Responsibility for support at the local level rests with the policymaking board of education. A board with a lukewarm attitude toward adult education will find a lukewarm program on its hands. A weak policy or no policy at all will result in confusion among staff members and general public alike. So this, then, is the first step toward solving problem one. Establish a written policy which defines the role of adult education in the community. This policy should involve many people before the board finally adopts it. A successful practice in most communities is to establish a citizens' advisory committee on adult education to work with the board. Since one of the important functions of adult education is to retain and upgrade old employees and to develop new employees for industry and business, this advisory committee should include representatives from business and industry. This liaison between school and business and industry is not only good for the adult education program but also improves the relationships between the schools and the business community generally. The policy should be well defined yet flexible enough to allow new courses to be introduced into the program easily and without long debate. The policy should spell out the amount of money to be spent for adult education. A dollars and cents figure would obviously be impractical, but a percentage or millage figure establishing a maximum or minimum figure is practical. Such a statement lends stability to the adult education program, offers the superintendent and his staff help in making the budget, and helps the board when budgetreview time rolls around. Generally, the board should set a maximum figure and instruct the superintendent to stay under that maximum. This figure may need to re reviewed from time to time due to growth or inflation. In Palo Alto Unified School District, for instance, we've been able to live for about 10 years with a 10-cent maximum from a total general operations tax ranging from $2.75 to $3.42. Enrollment in the district has grown in that decade from 4,500 to 13,000 with adult education enrollments growing in proportion. Included in the board's policy should be a statement on salaries for adult education teachers. These salaries should be in proportion to the salaries paid other employees and when pay increases are given to the general teaching staff, the same increases should be given to the adult education staff. Adult education programs involve personnel problems which vary from city to city, but we can safely say that the board should establish personnel and salary policies for the adult education staff similar to those established for the regular staff. These policies should have long-range aspects so that costs of the program can be forecast over a 5- or 10-year period. Another section of the board policy should deal with the payment or nonpayment of fees. Whether or not fees are charged at all or for which subjects is strictly a local problem. The nature of the community and the types and variety of courses offered will generally determine board policy in the matter. Adult education leaders in California, for instance, indicate that from 5 to 10 percent of the income for their programs comes from fees. But there are some leaders who advocate completely tax-supported adult education programs and some who think students should pay their own way. STATE SUPPORT State governments have been giving more and more attention and money to adult education programs during the last several years, but lengthy and heated legislative debate on the subject is coming. Higher costs of secondary and higher education will start legislators thinking in terms of priorities. Lobbyists for higher education, elementary and secondary education, teacher groups, special areas such as handicapped children and gifted children will be sure that their case is heard by legislators and community groups. Adult education, too, must have its spokesman, so that State legislators may begin to see adult education in its proper perspective as a regular part of the overall education program. The amount of State aid and the extent of State controls varies greatly throughout the Nation. California now pays from 30 to 50 percent of the adult education program cost. It does set up some controls for the type of program for which it will support, but these controls have created no serious conflict or policy clashes between State and local agencies. If anything, it has improved public support of adult education in the State. FEDERAL SUPPORT During World War II, the Federal Government was in the adult education business in a big way. Shipyard, airplane, and munitions workers all had to be trained. I was working in Portland, Oreg., at that time and remember setting up in-service education classes for teachers who had to train some 50,000 shipyard workers a year. Now the Federal Government participates very little in the financial support of public school adult education programs. If and when Federal money is given to the entire program of public education, adult education should be considered as an integral part of that program. Despite all the financial problems involved, adult education programs are growing. School administrators and board members with an eye to the future are glad of it. They see in adult education not only the chance to make a better community, but also the chance to reap such dividends as a better public understanding of all education, better community spirit, and less juvenile delinquency. These are the dividends which provide hope for a better school program. |