The process of reading requires intactness of complex brain mechanisms which regulate the functions of organization (putting things in order), direction, spatial orientation and association between different special sense data. If a child has a weakness in this respect, it will not show up in any simple performance. It may be outgrown, remedied by experience or compensated for. If, however, a very high level of performance is demanded, such as reading and knowing the spelling and sound of such words as through and trough, bow and bough, the symptom that appears on the surface may be a reading disability.
Many children whose trouble lies in the field of reading are wrongly diagnosed. This is due primarily to the fact that the frustration from the reading failure leads to all kinds of other emotional troubles. There is in fact a vicious circle. Emotional factors may lead to reading difficulties and chronic reading failure may cause emotional disturbances. Often behavior disorders clear up when the reading disorder is cured, and reading improves when emotional problems are straightened out. In my routine work over many years in mental hygiene clinics I have found children with reading disability wrongly committed to institutions for mental defectives, regarded as psychopathic or incorrigible without any regard for their reading disability, or given the facile and so often false diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia. These erroneous diagnoses, as well as the prevalent neglect of children's reading difficulties, are the more deplorable because most of these children could be helped.
The diagnosis of reading disorders is established by special reading tests, the selection of tests being adapted to the individual case, and the test results evaluated in combination with a general psychiatric and social study of the child.
There is a high correlation between intelligence, vocabulary and reading. Comic-book readers are handicapped in vocabulary building because in comics all the emphasis is on the visual image and not on the proper word. These children often know all that they should not know about torture but are unable to read or spell the word. For practical purposes a basis for diagnosis, as well as therapy, is intelligence. The child with reduced intelligence whose reading level is up to the level of his intelligence, but below expectancy for his age and grade, is considered a case of reading retardation.
When the child's reading level is below his mental level, the condition is regarded as a reading disability. If the reading ability of a very bright child is average for his age and grade, he is actually functioning below his potentialities for learning and deserves special remedial attention, because he is not up to his reading grade level according to tests.
The word specific is sometimes added to reading disability and the diagnostic label "specific reading disability" used. But this addition means very little. Usually the disorder is not specific, although it does require specific treatment, that is, remedial-reading training. Lack of interest in reading is often a reaction to failure in reading, a symptom indicating that other causal factors are operating in the creation of a reading problem. It may be a reaction to dislike or fear of school, pointing to more serious underlying difficulties. Failure in reading occurs not infrequently because a child has developed the illusion that he can read because he can follow a comic-book story from the pictures with the occasional reading of a word or two in the balloons. The bad reading and/or language habits he develops from such reading interfere with laying the foundation for proper reading habits.
The basis of a child's future reading career is usually laid down in the first and second grades. It is at this stage that comic books do the greatest harm with respect to reading. Children who may be most efficient in other spheres get more and more behind in mastering the reading process. Instead of learning good reading habits they acquire the habit of not reading. They become slow readers, meanwhile continuing to read their comic books.
The hereditary factor has been grossly exaggerated. The theories according to which reading disabilities are chiefly due to heredity express the most reactionary attitude. They relieve us of the responsibility, which is so necessary for purposes of prevention, to evaluate properly the psychological and social factors.
The most significant causes of reading difficulties are:
visual defects - particularly far-sightedness and poor fusion resulting from eye-muscle imbalance
auditory defects
speech defects
prolonged illness
frequent absences from school
frequent changes of school
emotional maladjustment
foreign language background
home conditions in their socio-economic and emotional aspects
poor teaching
lack of reading readiness.
Reading readiness is a most important concept. It is the acquired ability to profit from reading. In the British literature on reading disabilities, it is spoken of as "timing." It is characterized by such factors as intellectual development, visual and auditory perception, language development, background of experience and social behavior.
This is precisely one of the points where comic books are so harmful. They retard or even interfere with reading readiness. In this they may act as a prime causal factor or merely as an aggravating influence. Comic-book reading is an inadequate experience. The child fastens on one experience at the expense of others. If he is given these wrong or harmful experiences, he loses out on constructive experiences.
An important area where comic books do specific harm is the acquisition of fluent left-to-right eye movements, which is so indispensable for good reading. The eyes have to form the habit of going from left to right on the printed line, then returning quickly to the left at a point slightly lower. Reversal tendencies and confusions are common among children at the age of six. As better reading habits are acquired, including the all-important left-to-right movements, reversals and other errors gradually diminish and may automatically disappear. It is different with the comic-book reader who acquires the habit of reading irregular bits of printing here and there in balloons instead of complete lines from left to right.
Fred’s Video Collection
Superman’s ‘Action Comics’ No. 1 Sets Record with $6 Million Sale
BY AARON COUCH (The Hollywood Reporter)
Superman has leapt a world record in a single bound. An issue of Action Comic No. 1, which introduced the world to the Kryptonian hero, sold at auction for a record $6 million on April 4, 2024, making it the most valuable comic book in the world.
It tops an issue of 1939’s Superman No. 1, which sold for $5.3 million in 2022. Before that, the most valuable comic in the world was a copy of 1962’s Amazing Fantasy No. 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man, which sold for $3.6 million in 2021.
Action Comics No. 1 is exceedingly rare, with just 78 copies tracked by CGC, the service that authenticates and grades the condition of comic books. The service believes there are around 100 in existence total out of 200,000 initially printed by National Allied Publications, a forerunner of DC Comics.
The copy sold on Thursday has a grade of 8.5 out of 10, meaning it’s in excellent condition for a comic of its age. Only two other unrestored versions have ever graded higher. Demand for Action Comics No. 1 is so high that a version graded at just 0.5 sold for $408,000 in September.
The book, from creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, is arguably the most important in superhero comic book history and remains particularly relevant with filmmaker James Gunn shooting his new Superman film, due out in July 2025. The film is currently in production in Atlanta, with David Corenswet playing the hero.
Superman’s debut hit the newsstands with a wallop on April 18, 1938.