Preschool: Teaching Baby to Read

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Now the "Learn-A-Tron." Many "instructional kits" have also come out. Biggest one is First Adventures in Learning, a $69.95 package consisting primarily of 16 thin books—each dealing with such basic concepts as sizes and shapes, time, numbers and color—and a rather flimsy Learn-A-Tron plastic testing device. Parents insert rolls of simple pictures and questions into the Learn-A-Tron, then read the questions and check the child's answers. Example: one picture shows three geometric shapes, with the underline: "Which is the triangle?" The set, now used in some Head Start programs, will be sold door-to-door this fall along with Compton's Encyclopedia. Though overpriced, First Adventures can help parents explain to the child, in terms that he can understand, some ideas that he should have by the time he starts school.

Less helpful are such aids as the Milton Bradley Co.'s Modern Mathematics Kindergarten Kit, a motley of geometric shapes, animal cutouts and numbers in felt ($3). Kenworthy Educational Service, Inc. has put out Programmed Reading Aids, a series with ten flip cards of words ($2.50), perception cards showing figures, domino patterns and numbers ($1), and such 65¢ workbooks as I Learn to Read and Primary Count and Color. More informative for parents is a record-booklet package, Teaching Jonny's Sister to Read ($4.95), in which Cambridge Housewife Henny Wenkart instructs her 4½-year-old daughter in reading.

Too Many Vitamins? Educators and child psychologists are generally skeptical about the home-teaching trend, particularly the teaching of reading. They have little doubt that some parents can teach some three-year-olds and four-year-olds to read—but why should they? "No one has really given any sound reason for doing so," says Psychologist William Kessen of Yale's Child Study Center. Myra Woodruff, recently retired chief of New York State's Bureau of Child Development and Parent Education, believes that the real motivation for many parents to teach their tots is that "it represents status."

Some critics fear that early instruction, like an overdose of vitamins, can be harmful. Dr. Paul J. Kinsella, director of the Developmental Reading Clinic at Lake Forest, IIl., figures that a young child's hearing and seeing are so disorganized that parental pressure to read may only confuse him or cause emotional blocks that would permanently impair his reading. Dr. Evelyn Pitcher, chairman of child study at Tufts University, recalls a four-year-old girl who could read, but "all other aspects of her development were neglected. She did not want to play, was not popular, and withdrew into vicarious experience." Burton White of Harvard's School of Education calls the home-teaching trend "mass hysteria" and "part of the overemphasis on cerebral development."