Teaching: Forced Reading

In a classroom at Chicago’s Reading Research Foundation, an attractive blonde teacher brusquely ordered her pupils to “move one-quarter turn.” When seven-year-old Kim Helton failed to obey, the teacher bore down on the girl with all the authority of a Marine drill sergeant. “Well, do it!” she yelled. “Move! Move! Move!” Slowly, and blinking back the tears, Kim made the turn. At another class, a young Negro boy began to cry when his teacher rasped out a command to “Think! Wake Up!” Glaring, the teacher snapped back: “Knock it off, Bobby.” The sniffling stopped.

Far from being sadistic punishment, the application of force and shouted commands is the Reading Research Foundation’s way of helping children with normal intelligence who simply cannot learn to read adequately. Most of those who attend the weekly after-school clinics at the foundation are victims of dyslexia (TIME, May 13, 1966), a catchall term describing children who suffer from slight brain damage or inherited neurological handicaps that interfere with their control over both motor and sensory functions. Some are hyperactive—any kind of stimulation distracts them, makes them restless. Others withdraw into a shell, have trouble expressing themselves, prefer not to try rather than risk failure at learning. All seem unable to concentrate more than fleetingly on a problem; many see letters transposed, hear sounds out of order, cannot write in a normal sequence.

Walking on Clouds. The foundation’s shock technique attempts to jar the children into attention and keep them from being distracted. Administrative Director S. Willard Footlik explains that the degree of force is fitted to the needs of each pupil and contends that “the children realize we aren’t yelling at them because we’re mad at them.” The commands, he says, are always something the children are capable of carrying out—and when they do, “they walk on clouds because they have succeeded.” The harsh drills are designed to help the children to control their actions so that they move only on a teacher’s command, then respond to vocal commands of their own making, finally move only on their own silent internal commands. This kind of control is an essential preliminary to learning how to read, the foundation’s psychologists contend.

Now three years old, the nonprofit foundation handles up to 350 children in each eleven-week term. Most have been referred by Chicago area schools, psychologists or social agencies. School officials report that children who take the training often double their rate of learning; Footlik claims that the clinic so far has not failed to improve the reading ability of any child who sticks with the drills long enough. No one yet knows, however, whether the bullying technique has harmful long-range effects on personality development. James Weddell, director of Purdue University’s Achievement Center for Children, says some of his staff have been “appalled” by the indiscriminate use of force at the clinic, and he fears it may “tear some kids asunder emotionally.”

Like New Children. Initially, many of the children respond to the brutal commands in an agony of terror, and many parents, understandably, lack the stomach to watch the foundation’s reading drillmasters in action. Yet parents of those who have graduated from the clinic sessions generally think that the torment was worthwhile. Mrs. Gordon Helton admits that neither of her two children now attending the clinic was ever before able to pay attention or sit still. But Kim now has improved so rapidly in reading that she will not have to repeat first grade; nine-year-old Laura, who had never learned to color properly, had one of her drawings voted best in class. “It’s like two new children have moved into the house,” she says.