Education: Primers for Slum Kids

The world of My Little Red Story Book consists of white children of an upper-middle-class family living in the suburbs with an apple tree, a pony, a two-car garage and heaps of toys. But in Detroit public schools, where this pre-primer is standard for first-graders, 46.5% of the children are Negroes living in city slums.

Supposedly aimed at creating interest by picturing situations that might happen in its readers’ lives, the book instead shows a remote and segregated world.

To raise reading interest, Detroit last week brought out three new primers whose characters are mostly Negro children. Aided by the Ford Foundation-financed Great Cities School Improvement Program, the books are the work of four Detroit educators who analyzed slum tots’ talk, concluded that they need short primers with fewer words, more drama and humor. The books—Fun with David, Play with Jimmy, Laugh with Larry—do not improve on the much criticized run-Spot-run style of older primers. But now most of the faces are brown,”kitty” replaces “pony,” David makes mud pies on the front stoop, Mother hangs the wash on the clothesline, and a friendly white kid named Larry comes to visit with a rope-leashed pup named Wiggles. To be tested in twelve Detroit schools that are 50% or more Negro, the books shun explicit details of the ugly world in which their readers live, try to portray an environment that their readers can reasonably imagine reaching. Hopefully, more reading is part of that environment.