Word: tracings
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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...
...Words." The reason for such limitations is the U.S. dogma of "vocabulary control"-holding down each reader to only a few new words. The rules are often "downright exquisite," says Trace. Widely used readers boast that "no new words" appear for 100 pages or more; the old words are endlessly repeated; the stories are inevitably dull. "Insipid, trivial, inane, pointless," Trace calls them...
...this point. Trace's critique meshes precisely with another new report by seven indignant American, British and Canadian reading experts. Tomorrow's Illiterates (Little, Brown; $3.95) is edited by English Professor Charles C. Walcutt of New York City's Queens College. He cites one series of primers as typical of "vocabulary control": at the end of first grade, after using four books, the child learns 235 words, endlessly repeated in 7,257 words of text...
When Gonzalez died in 1942, the world's scrap iron was as precious as its guns. It was not until war's end that sculptors in metal were free to trace his pioneer steps. Now rods, clinkers, nuts and bolts have been fused and forged into the new nature of sculpture, and in its open and bristling aerial forms, there is everywhere homage to Gonzalez...