Re: ELEM.Biographies & Weed of Month [LONG]

[Ken Umbach <kumbach@UNLIMITED.NET>]

Did anyone else do a double-take at this:

At 06:21 PM 4/12/98 -0500, Joan Kimball wrote:
>Weeding biographies in an elementary library is full of challenges.
...
>The Landmark biographies published in the 1950's are just about out, but I
>...And the writing itself has become too hard for elementary kids to follow.

HUH????  "The writing itself has become too hard"?!  But the writing (the
words in those books) has not changed one whit since the books were
published!  They have been sitting on the shelves all that time.  So how has
it "become too hard"?  The writing has not changed, so it can only be that
students have become less able to read since the 1950s.  Is it really a best
practice to dumb down the collection this way?  How long can that go on
before nothing is left?  Don't we want to bring kids up to the reading level
that was accepted as normal for that age only 40 years ago?

Comments?

Ken
--
Kenneth W. Umbach, Ph.D., Policy Analyst
California Research Bureau, California State Library
900 N Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, California 95814
E-mail: kumbach@unlimited.net (or kumbach@library.ca.gov)
Phone (voice) 916-653-6002 (fax) 916-654-5829
Personal Web page and selected papers: http://members.unlimited.net/~kumbach
This message reflects my opinion, not that of my employer or anyone else.

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