Elton B. McNeil

Every now and then a teacher will achieve the impossible — or, at least, the incredible. Rarely are these achievements reported; hence, they are seldom recognized or emulated or even examined. Even when they are, it is far too often outside the education “establishment,” relegated to the world of legends or happenstance or inimitable ideals. ’Tis a pity.

From those exotic Sixties, when experiments in education were being tried all over, some working, some not, Daniel Fader’s story ought to stand out. I fear it has been forgotten. He begins his account by telling of a young thirteen-year-old prostitute, who comes to school only three days a week and works the rest of the time, of the respect she is shown by the other students. Then he launches into his impassioned defense of “the unreachables, the unteachables.”

“How can we offer them Dick and Jane and the castrated classics when fourteen-year-old Dick protects the peace of thirteen-year-old Jane on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and purchases a piece of the same Jane on Tuesdays and Thursdays? How can we get them to believe that we’re for real when we spend our hours from eight to three eluding them in a ground fog of words, and they spend their time from three to eight plus Saturdays, Sundays and holidays bumping and scraping against HOW IT IS? We’re not for real; they know it, and they’ve put us down.”

This paragraph gives the reader a sense of Fader’s indignation at our failure, his understanding of the “realities” of the alienated student’s world, and his uncompromising language in expressing his ideas (“castrated classics,” “a ground fog of words,” “bumping and scraping”). What it does not give you is a glimmer of the hope that he represents and of the practical strategies he uses to realize his hope — with the emphasis on REALize.

Hooked on Books: Program & Proof (G. P. Putnam’s, c1966) tells his story. Actually, this edition of an earlier work describes the program he devised for the new W. J. Maxey Boys’ Training School, a school for “noncontinuing students” (that is, dropouts), or to be more specific, a school for juvenile delinquents. After a year of observation and interviews, especially with students themselves, he devised a program called English in Every Classroom. It revolved around two basic principles: DIFFUSION and SATURATION. The former simply means that every teacher in the school every hour of the day will involve the students in reading and writing, NOT just the one designated as an English teacher. The latter means that each classroom, every space in the building, will be “saturated” with reading materials: not those “castrated classics” or conventional textbooks, but magazines, newspapers, and paperback books of proven appeal to such youngsters.

“Every day in every major subject classroom you enter, you’re required to read and write as though reading and writing really mattered to every one of your teachers.”

“ . . . the replacement, whenever possible and in whatever classroom, of customary texts and workbooks with newspapers, magazines, and paperbound books. The object of this is to stir the sensibility of the practical child. Even as he learns to be reticent in a world of words he cannot fathom, so may he learn to be receptive in a world of words he can understand. Because he finds newspapers, magazines, and paperbound books in every classroom, and because he can and will read them, he may yet be brought to compromise with a verbal world he cannot avoid.”

A few features of the program are virtually unique in USAmerican secondary schools:

1. Teachers work in teams; all teachers require regular reading and writing; the English teacher in each team is given a reduced load to serve as consultant and resource person to the other teachers.

2. Every student in every class writes a short paper in class every other day: five papers every two weeks. One of these is read for content by the subject teacher; one is read by an English teacher; one is filed unread.

3. Every student is given, at the beginning of the year, two paperbound books of his choice, a paperbound dictionary, and a spiral notebook for a journal — all these to keep as their own.

4. Students must write at least two pages per week in their journals. They turn them in once a week; they are never corrected; they are read by the teacher only when the student requests that they be read. Students are encouraged but not required to write more — purely as practice, to exercise their writing, like practicing the piano or running laps.

5. Though the reading program is never described in detail, it is clear that some materials are read in common, but that many are selected individually by the student and read independently.

6. Conventional textbooks are avoided in all subjects. Newspapers, magazines, and paperbound books that will be appealing, accessible, and convenient are used by every teacher in every class. The library provides titles that students will want to read, not simply books that they “ought to read.”

7. The study of grammar, spelling, usage and the like grows organically out of the students’ reading and writing.

I wish that Fader had included a narrative of at least one of the classes, showing how it worked from the beginning. But he didn’t. I wish there had been case studies of a few students to show how they responded and were affected. But there aren’t. I wish there were at least one account written by or about a teacher, showing how s/he adopted and adapted the program. There isn’t. The book is really an argument — a vociferous argument — for the principles of the program, always capitalized: DIFFUSION and SATURATION. Beyond that you have to use your imagination and organize the few details you are given.

This edition of the book (now subtitled Program and Proof) is devoted to some fairly amateurish educational research. Mostly it describes the instruments used, primarily questionnaires. Appendices give a number of statistical tables. The general conclusion would be that the Boys’ School students do somewhat better than the control group. Just how conclusive the evidence is would be hard to say.

What is far more interesting is a section on another project, the Luddington Reading Room, which has Fader’s own list of materials, especially magazines and paperbound books, and his comments on which were the most appealing. Get ready for the popularity of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Dennis the Menace, of books on psychology and of Ebony magazine. But get ready, too, for these titles to appear among the most popular ones: Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Black Like Me, 1984, Raisin in the Sun, Dick Gregory’s Nigger, What Girls Want to Know about Boys, and William Barrett’s Lilies in the Field.

And read the account of one young man’s insisting upon checking out The Scarlet Letter, because he’s heard it’s a book about a whore. Months later, after having struggled through the text valiantly and reading lots of other books in the meantime, he finishes it. Turning it in, he concludes simply, “This woman ain’t no whore.”

Let them read. Let them write. In every classroom. Every day. Every hour of the day. Whatever they are willing to read and write. That’s the message. Would that the folks hiding behind No Child Left Behind understood that.… (mer)