Remedial Reading Clinic

Comic-book reading is nowadays a real obstacle to therapy

The best understanding of reading difficulties is obtained in the process of therapy. Success may be achieved by a variety of methods. The patient work of the remedial-reading teacher gets the best results if it is combined with understanding psychotherapy, constructive social service work and tactful family counseling. The reading teacher should work just a little below the child's level, so that the child will not get discouraged and will start emotionally with a successful and reassuring experience from the beginning. Comic-book reading is nowadays a real (though often not recognized) obstacle to therapy, for it is difficult - if not impossible - to keep a child away from comic books which are so temptingly displayed wherever he goes.

I have had occasion to study the reading problem specifically on over one hundred cases studied and treated at the Remedial Reading Clinic which I founded and organized at the Queens General Hospital and which functions under the direction of a trained remedial reading teacher. These children represented about every variety of reading disorder, and the results of their treatment were highly encouraging. The general gains they made were due chiefly to overcoming resistance to reading, increased security and confidence and amount of work accomplished. In the last respect comic-book readers are also handicapped.

If a child can read good books, he can talk or even brag about it to his parents and others. The sort of community of interest established between children, and between them and adults, by reading and knowing the same stories and classics is one of the benefits derived by children from reading, and one that is lost to comic-book readers. They also lose the interest of being read to, because looking at pictures has robbed them of the art of listening. They cannot tell adults what they read and win approval by showing that they know by their own effort something that is interesting to adults. They are left with disjointed bits of reading about banks robbed and girls bound and beaten which are better left undiscussed with parents.

Reading disorders existed, of course, long before comic books. We know that they are due to a great variety of factors, but among these factors for the present-day child comic books have a definite place. Moreover, reading difficulties among children have increased and are continuing to increase with the rise of the comic book.

The comic-book industry has successfully spread the fantastic idea that comic books are actually good for children's reading. So, the fundamental question arises, How many children suffering from reading disorders are comic-book readers? 'The answer is simple. Most of them are. Comic books, especially crime comics, are a significant part of these children's lives. If anything, they read them earlier and in greater numbers than other children.

Twelve-year-old Kenneth was referred by his school. Reading tests showed him to be an almost total non-reader. He "reads" fourteen to twenty comic books a day. Questioned about this, he says proudly, "Oh, yes! I can read some words! I can read guns, police, Donald Duck and horse. That's all. when I'm on the subway I can read Times Square. But when I had to go to Floral Park once I couldn't read it so I missed the stop."

Here is an unselected group, a whole class of the Reading Clinic:

An interesting sidelight on such a sample group is the fact that these eleven children coming from families screened by social workers for attendance at a free clinic were an economic asset to the comic-book industry to the tune of almost twenty dollars a week.

Fred’s Video Collection

From the 1989 Batman soundtrack. Helped by the film's popularity, the song reached number one in the US, becoming Prince's fourth American number-one single and his first number-one hit since "Kiss" in 1986.

"Batdance" is almost two songs in one - a chaotic, mechanical dance beat that changes gears into a slinky, funky groove before changing back for the song's conclusion. The track is an amalgam of many musical ideas of Prince's at the time.

Mashed with the Batman and Robin serial (1949).

Directed by Spencer Bennet.

Cinematography by Ira H. Morgan.

Edited by Dwight Caldwell and Earl Turner.