While conceding Russia's megatonic output of scientists and engineers, U.S. educators are fond of a theory that Soviet schools suppress the humanities—subjects that supposedly thrive in U.S. schools. To "shatter that illusion" is a goal of English Professor Arther S. Trace Jr., member of the Russian study center at Cleveland's John Carroll University.
This week Trace stated his case in What Ivan Knows That Johnny Doesn't (Random House; $3.95), a comparison between Russian and U.S. non-science textbooks. He argues that humanities are "dangerously neglected" in U.S. schools and that Russian children get "vastly more thorough training" in those subjects.
Spot v. Tolstoy. The key, says Trace. is early introduction to the joys of good reading. Russian youngsters enter first grade at seven, a year later than U.S. children. But in a few weeks, using a phonics system, they can handle all sounds of their Cyrillic alphabet (Russian is more precisely phonetic than English). Bright or slow, all children then take up a standard first-grade reader with a vocabulary of 2,000 words. By comparison, one commonly used U.S. first reader. Fun with Dick and Jane* is limited to a 158-word vocabulary. Sample: "See me run," said Sally. "See Spot run. Oh, oh! This is fun."
In essence, the Russians shun this-is-fun in favor of solid content. In his first reader, the Russian tot is blatantly propagandized, notably in a eulogy of Lenin's love for children. He is urged to keep clean, study hard, tell the truth, feed birds in winter, help old ladies when they fall, and take care of papa when mama is off at her job flying an airplane. But he also studies the lives of ants, bees and squirrels. He is taught how to identify six mushrooms, twelve birds and the tracks of hares, foxes and wolves. Fully one-third of his reader is unadulterated literature—poems by Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov, old Russian fables and seven assorted stories and anecdotes by Leo Tolstoy, including his Russian version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
In second grade the Soviet student doubles his reading vocabulary to 4,000 words. In third grade he hits 8,000 words with a formidable reader of 384 pages. The paper is cheap; the prose is rich. A third-grader studies the origin of everything from rivers and steel to frogs and wind. Anatomy and medicine are introduced with an adult description of bones, muscles, lungs, heart, ear, contagious diseases and six bacteria, all illustrated. Throughout the reader are stories by first-rate authors—Chekhov, Turgenev, Gorky.
When he finishes fourth grade, with a reading vocabulary of 10,000 words, the Soviet student is ready for a systematic study of Russian literature, plus separate courses in history, geography and foreign languages. By contrast, the U.S. fourth-grader is still at work on a "basal" reader with a vocabulary of fewer than 1,800 words, "a middle-class idealization" of cardboard mommies and daddies in "a hypothetical and sterile community"—trirling stories written by obscure women with three names.