The big debate over how Johnny should learn to read may have passed from the headlines, but to Columnist Dorothy Thompson there is another question that is equally important: Are the schools giving Johnny a reading diet of literatureĀor of pap? Last week, after comparing the old lesson books to the slick basal readers of today with their controlled vocabularies, word-frequency counts, and bland little tales about Dick and Jane, Columnist Thompson had her answer: "It is possible," says she in the current Ladies' Home
Journal, "that in the universal push to abolish illiteracy, we may create the phenomenon of literates illiterate...
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