SPECIFIC READING DISABILITY 65

turbance, and, somewhat on his age. In general, younger children respond more quickly than older ones, in whom years of failure have produced well-justified discouragement and emotional tensions, and who have further to go to catch up. Isn't All This Expensive?

It certainly is. Nevertheless, when the family can afford it, a few hundred dollars spent on skilled tutoring in the early grades may make all the difference between success and failure in high school, college, and later life. When the family cannot afford the additional expense, the problem is left with the public school authorities, whose inadequate budgets in most communities do not give them the means to supply the necessary amount of tutoring. How Can The Cost Be Lessened?

The only way to diminish the cost to the individual family and to the community is to identify the children with specific reading disability early in the first grade. We now know enough to do this successfully in most cases. The school should then teach them by methods they can understand and utilize. Many will respond to group teaching, others will require the intensive individual tutoring we have described. The money now spent in the upper grades on "remedial reading" will bring far better results if spent in the first grade on finding these children, and then on teaching them by methods that they themselves say, "Make sense."

When the correct methods are used, these children gradually learn to read, write, and spell wall enough to compete successfully with their classmates. There is nothing mysterious in the technique used in teaching them. It is more time-consuming and expensive, because these pupils have to proceed for a while more slowly than the others and may need indi- vidual attention.

The wealthy can easily afford the tutoring; others, only at a sacrifice; and the majority, not at all. The present situation, which allows intelli- gent children with a specific disability in reading to fail year after year with consequent frustration and problem behavior, is intolerable in com- munities which boast of supplying free education for all.

The solution lies in the hands of the parents and teachers of the children who are suffering. Little will be done until they demand relief; for there are still too many teachers and school psychologists who do not separate the specific form of reading disability from reading failure due to other causes, and who do not realize that specific reading disability re- quires a special sort of teaching.

SEMANTICS 1969: What to Call the Teacher? Dr. Eustis uses "tutor", as do many other people. Anna Gillingham

objected vigorously to this usage because in common speech a "tutor" refers to one who helps a student catch up with his class if he has been absent or is just not a very able learner. The tutor, in this sense, uses an individual-but-more-of-the-same approach.

6 6 BULLETIN OF THE ORTON SOCIETY

But a tutor in the great British, and some noted American, univer- sities is not this at all. He is a specialist in his field of at least the rank of "fellow", who guides and teaches able students individually. Such a tutor is an impor tant member of the teaching staff. Dr. Eustis and many others of us employ the term in very much this sense. I t is an easy word to use, direct and simple and less circuitous than the more descriptive "language re-education specialist", "language therapist" or the other just as ambiguous titles we have been exper iment ing with. I t conveys part of the meaning- ind iv idua l teaching.

However hard we try, some people will misunderstand any title, for none can unequivocally epitomize a complex specialty. A name can help public understanding, but clear explanations and competent perform- ance are the essential "proof of the pudding," whatever the brand names of its ingredients. I t matters far less what Polly de Trevi l le is called, for instance, than that she can help bring about an incident like this:

W H E R E ? When an aware and creative student works with an unders tanding

teacher even a spelling homework assignment can provide an opportun- ity to be freely seized and warmly appreciated. T h e problem: to dis- tinguish there from their and they're. T h e assignment: 1. Wri te five questions which begin with the word where. 2. Wri te five answers which use here. 3. Wri te five more answers which use there.

Here, where there might have been mere rout ine examples, is the unforgettable response of 1969, offered by a boy of 15 who is obviously in tune with Pete Seeger and "Abraham, Mart in and John."

"Where have all the flowers gone? Where did my friend go, the man named John? Where did my good friend, Martin, go? Where did John's brother go, the man named Robert? Where have all the morals gone? Here are all the flowers, t rampled in Harlem. Here is John, with an everlasting torch. Here is Martin, shot while fixing a nation. Here is Robert . Like John, he's six feet under. Here are the m o r a l s - in the dusty pages of the past. Th e re are the flower children, getting smashed by cops. Th e re is my friend, John, in a five by eight grave and

nowhere else. T h e r e is my friend, Mart in, in a sniper's scope. The re is R o b e r t - immorta l now. Th e re are all our morals, like embers on a cooling hearth.

They ' re all dying in buckets of money and barrels of oil. Wil l iam McConnell T h e Rectory School Pomfret , Conn. -- July, 1969