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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 1960)
B MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, ORE. THURSDAY. OCTOBER 27. 1960 Effort Made To Strengthen All Levels of Educational Prbcess By HELEN B. SHAFFER Washington -Com plaints over the inability of many high school graduates to read, write or. do simple arithmetic with ease or competence are beginning to get results. A country-wide effort is under way to strengthen instruction in the three R's at all levels of the educational process. It's more than a matter of going back to drilling and memoriz ing. New methods of teaching youngsters the basic skills of learning are calculated to stimulate their interest and put new zest into the task of learning. '. ' ' Reforms in teaching the three R's have been a promi nent theme in many recent educational conferences. Al though debate continues over the relative values of "child centered", as against "subject- HILLS BROS. COFFEE 4 lb. I I A Can yy sift PROSPECT STORE ' Proiptct, Or.. .' centered" education, demands for tougher, more disciplined instruction in basic subjects are having profound effects on school programs. New teaching materials are being widely introduced. Teachers are being sent to special work shops to learn more effective ways to give their young charges a satisfactory ground ing in fundamentals of educa tion. Program Watched Elementary school heads all over the country are watching an experimental program in stituted this year at the Ami don School in the District of Columbia. The program was set - up to test the belief of Washington's school superin tendent 'that children will learn better and faster if taught by more direct and more' concentrated methods and if required to put forth more effort. The school's pros pectus points out that it is facility lh the three R's which' enables students to "unlock the knowledge and experience man has' acquired and pre served." The Amidon School seeks to give its pupils that. facility by "combining the best of the old and the new" ways of teaching. . Various new Instructional systems for beginning readers and for retarded readers have been developed in the past decade. The so-called Phono- visual method relies heavily on training in letter sounds. The Hay-Wingo system stress es from the beginning the sounds of letters and combi nations of letters and it entails extensive drilling. The New Castle system uses film strips -to project the reading lesson on a screen - a method found particularly successful with children of low or average I.Q.s. At the Amidon School reading instruction starts with study of the alphabet, . pho netics and syllabication. The method combines "seeing and sounding," and "the meaning of words will, where neces sary, be taught by the teach er." i Methods of Refining Reforms in reading instruc tion are not limited to tech niques for teaching beginners. They include methods of re fining and deepening, the old er student's use of his reading skill. Many junior .high schools employ the so-called "developmental reading" pro gram for this purpose. De velopmental reading takes many forms - reading for be low - average students, speed reading for competent stu dents, differential reading to teach students to read in one way for general knowledge, In another for details, ; in another for pleasure. Inability of college students or graduates to write well has been attributed to failure to require them to do enough writing and rewriting before they entered college. Former President Conant of Harvard, who recently made a, close study of American secondary education, has recommended that half the time in high school English classes be de voted, to composition, i Stu dents; he said, should be re quired to write an average of one theme a week. Elemen tary school teachers have been showing increasing in terest In a language arts pro gram developed for fourth, fifth, and sixth-graders at Bos ton's Francis Parkman School. Pupils there are taught not only spelling, grammar and rules of sentence structure; they are trained also in ob servation and in the selective use of words and phrases. Mora Radical Changes Reforms in mathematics in struction, some still in the experimental stage, promise even more radical changes than those in English instruc tion. Activity in this field, spurred by the need to do a better job of training scien tists and technicians for the automation and missile age, Is concerned with achieving a broadened understanding of mathematics among, all 'stu dents and of finding ways to awaken a wider interest in the subject. The new approach at" tempts to tear the veil from the "secret world" in which professional mathematicia n s operate. It has to do with the nature of mathematical think ing, the meaning of mathe matical symbols, the basic concepts which govern the solution of problems. One of the most interesting fruits of the movement to re vise the mathematics curricu lum has been the growing conviction that certain ab stract mathematical concepts can be learned at very early- ages. Syracuse University s Madison Project has success fully introduced study of alge bra as far down the education al ladder as the third grade. It has been found that algebra actually is easier for fourth graders than for children in 7960s Predicted as .. High Income Decade Fort Wayne, Ind. - A rub ber company executive pre dicts the 1960s will be known as the "decade of the high income family." Karl O. Nygaard, business reserrch director for B. F. Goodrich Co., told a gathering of engineers here 25 million American families will nave incomes of more than $7,500 a year by 1970. 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