St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 56

VK3 PQMEAMD A0 Pelicans don't eat bread and Pelicans live on fish. They scoop their bills down, butter. down and find All the fish they can wisn. The pelicans eat till they're content. Their friends wonder where the fish all went.

II mi) (Ln( The Pelicans" from "Animals and Vs." SCHOOL WRITTEN in the LANGUAGE TODAY BOOKS a story about sheep. Pi- i Cwf A the noasR a-waisoifliSL. How a PA Educational Project Plays on a Child's Natural Interests Such as Cowboys, Pirates and Animals. An iilusfrafion from "Woolies By ROBERT SELL A Special Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine NEW YORK. Says I to myself, says 1, I wish 1 were strong as an ox, wish I were tall, says 1, And knew how to fight and to box.

Then up the next street, thinks Lives Bully McNally, the sneak, I wish to return, thinks I. The beating he gave me last week. From "Poems" by George Barnet. HERE'S a new influence in education in the metropolis and the bit of doggerel quoted above can illustrate aptly just what it is. Take note of that colloquialism "says I to myself" shades of McGuffeyl And the down-to-earth sentiment of it alL fighting! Something about common street But the WPA Education Project 4t Hl''Lj and speech.

He was so enthusiastically received that he had to give his autograph to almost all the children. i Another of the books is "The Little News-paper Man," which tells about a little boy whose older brother is a newspaper copy boy. The little fellow learns how a newspaper is printed, how the headlines are written and how the news comes over the telegraph wires and is processed for "the greedy presses" crying out for more news. AMONG the comic strip books is "Stumpy and Sam" in which a sailor and his young friend are shipwrecked and, sinking to Davy Jones Locker, discover the lost continent of Atlantis where money grows on trees and hot dog stands are operated by mermaids. Another strip shows of squirrel finding a bag of peanuts.

"Peanuts!" says the squirrel, "Just what I love." From behind a tree a hungry snarls "Squirrel! Just What I Love." The last panel of the cartoon shows the squirrel fleeing with the cat in hot pursuit. There is a book of poems "Animals and Us," by Mary Carolyn Davie with wood cuts by Mary Lizi Ittner. A sample: "The timid hippopotamus Lives in the river right by us. We have a tent upon the shore. He lives a few feet off or more.

He always likes to play with us. The timid hippopotamus." Another elementary book "Wpolies," describes the life and duties of a sheep herder. Captain and His Ship." Osier Dunn wrote a spirited series of "Buck-aroo Rhymes of the Double-bar representative of which is: "Billy and Barney always laugh To watch me try to ride a calf. For I go up and the calf turns around. And I come down and hit the ground.

That calf can pitch! Sometimes I wonder How he can always stay out from under Me, when I'm up in the air. When I come down he's never there! It's the hardest thing, I've always found, To keep that calf between me and th ground." One of the so-called "information book" is "Coffee, Tea and Chocolate," written and illustrated by Anne Merryman Pack. An adventure story. "The Buried Treasure." i about two boys who were "tough" and their capture of a bad man. It was writtw by Irving Drutman who also turned out "The Proud Prince." a fairy story that begins at the time the Prince and Prince are supposed to start living happily after in the conventional stories.

of Proud Prince." educational guinea pigs. The response was instantaneous and enthusiastic. The normal children liked the exciting stories, the backward ones were also taken by the fact the inside covers did not state the books were lower grades. From school to school "Tom Coe, From "Coffee, Tea severe in overcoming difficulties if their interests are aroused, the series of booklets was planned. What would children read of their own volition? The titles tell the tale of the attempts.

Stories of every day life, of the immediate environment, are the life blood of the newspapers and the Journals of opinion; try stories of environment on the children. The fairy story has its place: Try that also. The great classics will interest others; the adventure serial is an Indis-X pensable part of the popular weeklies and the comic strip is the delight of children the country over. "If children have free access to such varieties of reading material, will they seek it and use it? The reports which come from, the schools indicate that they will, but the final answer is not yet known. The means for the production of material for the project are inadequate so that systematic checkup of results on a sufficiently wide scale to Justify definite conclusions has not yet been possible.

"Another obstacle is the didatic tendency of the teachers to use these reading materials for purposes of direct instruction. Such is not their purpose. Primarily these reading materials are for the voluntary use of the children to ascertain whether, if such material is made freely accessible to children, it will be taken and read. If it is so sought the end is gained. If there are faults in planning and construction we will seek to remedy them.

And if we can find out and demonstrate the demand then Miss Bowman and I will be in a position to demand more money to buy books." Vigneffe from "The Old Dr. Chatfield cited the case of a boy who while he was unable to read was a problem truant, but who changed to a satisfactory pupil when he finally learned how to read. In this connection he cited an estimate by Professor Gates that "at least eight to 10 times the amount of reading material now available to the school child is necessary to produce a good reader." i THE current crop of books abounds in colloquialisms such as TL." "Man! this is something!" "This is the life." and "Oh Boy." Typical of the subject matter is "Tom Coe. Pirate," which is in several parts, each a separate book in itself. It tells the story of a swashbuckling pirate and each of its chapters ends in a dramatic incident, such as in the old time motion picture serials.

This series brought forth an avalanche of letters from children who wanted to know what happened to the characters after part three, whether the pirates settled down and became home-loving folk or whether they were pardoned. Alfred Sinks, the author, was importuned by the students of P. S. 68 to solve the problem and he went to the school to make a 1037 booklets went and letters began arriving at the offices of the Board of Education. They were, in effect, fan letters from the children.

So this year the books were dressed up. They were given covers in gay colors and striking illustrations either multi-colored or black and white prints made with linoleum, wood and rubber blocks. Photographs cannot be used since the WPA-Board of Education plant where the books are printed lacks a photoengraving department. Now more than 21,000 copies of the books are circulating among 140 schools. The most popular are the adventure and mystery yarns such as "Tom Coe, Pirate," while books on astronomy and geography and other "information" themes are of secondary Interest.

There is an increasing demand for G-men yarns although the project is trying to swing the emphasis to the exploits of the local police and fire departments and how. the dry gets its food and water, etc. Dr. Chatfield pointing out that these are books for voluntary reading, is delighted with the results thus far "and is eagerly awaiting the outcome of tests to determine whether New York youngsters know more words than are contained in the Gates' list. If this is the case future books may be even more elaborate.

"If the thesis be granted that ability to read is one of the chief goals of school work, and that practice consistent and repeated practice is, the means thereto," Dr. Chatfield said, "the problem still remains, as to how that practice may be secured. "One thing we found certain: The teacher literally cannot drive the child to the drudgery he will cheerfully perform to serve his own ends. The discipline of required tasks has been and still remains a fetish, but the self-discipline, imposed to realise something deeply desired, is as superior to the discipline imposed by another as light to darkness. 'In the belief that children per- Vignette from "Sudcaroo Ahymes." Post Dig patclt December 20, and the Board of Education are not apologising they are too busy receiving congratulations for devising primers written for school children in "the living language" and frankly and successfully designed to inculcate the love of reading.

The project, one of the happier essays of the Works Progress Administration, came into being a couple of years ago when the Board of Education and, specifically. George H. Chatfield. director of the Bureau of Attendance, decided that something drastic would have to be done to persuade most pupils to read of their own volition. They had the formal school books, with dull board covers and mostly uninspired reading matter.

The prose was acceptable for the more studious children, but the normal and backward pupils were shying away from it. II the backward children were given readers of lower classes they felt they were being branded as subnormal, a psychologically dangerous possibility. There was only one solution that Chatfield could see and that was a "modernization of McGuffey," so to speak. In other words books for supplementary reading based on the current interests of the children they were seeking to reach. What these were he determined in consultation with Miss Ann Bowman, director of the "New Reading Materials" project.

They knew all children liked the comic strips. The G-men were also a favorite topic. And pirates, cops firemen, cowboys and Indians were perennial favorites. 'Fairy stories well, some of those were all right, but the mode of expression was usually a little archaic. With these subjects as a 'tarter Miss Bowman gave assignments to he former newspaper men and writers on ler staff.

The first manuscripts were mimeo-jTaphed and carefully gone over. Each of the writers was told not to use too many new words in fact they were given quotas and to make their plots simple, entertaining and realistic. For vocabulary purposes the 1800-word list for elementary grades drawn up by Professor Arthur L. Gates of Page Tiro Illustration from "The Teachers College. Columbia University, was used.

The writers were told that whenever they Introduced a new word they were to repeat it at least three times in the text. Then the approved mimeographed books were sent to certain schools selected as for Sunday Magazine St. Luuls.