The teaching of reading, some considerations

<div>During the past six years as a "General Subjects Teacher" in a Provincial Technical High School with a roll of 700 plus I have observed with misgiving the apparent marked lack of reading ability displayed by the pupils. I have felt continually frustrated in my attempts to teach various subjects by the fact that a preponderance of the pupils are poor readers. Furthermore a considerable proportion of pupils openly resented opportunities to avail themselves of a free choice of reading matter during any silent periods offered to them. Many were content to turn over pages of books or magazines and frequently gave pictures only the most cursory scrutiny.</div>

The teaching of reading, some considerations

<div>During the past six years as a "General Subjects Teacher" in a Provincial Technical High School with a roll of 700 plus I have observed with misgiving the apparent marked lack of reading ability displayed by the pupils. I have felt continually frustrated in my attempts to teach various subjects by the fact that a preponderance of the pupils are poor readers. Furthermore a considerable proportion of pupils openly resented opportunities to avail themselves of a free choice of reading matter during any silent periods offered to them. Many were content to turn over pages of books or magazines and frequently gave pictures only the most cursory scrutiny.</div>

The B&C Kinematograph Company and British Cinema

This book sheds new light on the under-researched period of early British cinema through an in-depth history of the British and Colonial Kinematograph Company – also known as ‘B&C’– in the years 1908-1916, the period when it became one of Britain’s leading film producers. It provides an account of its films and personalities, and explores its production methods, business practices and policy changes. Gerry Turvey examines the range of short film genres B&C manufactured, including newsworthy topicals and comics, and series dramas, and how they often drew on the resources of urban Britain’s existing popular culture – from cheap reading matter to East End melodramas. He discusses B&C’s first open-air studio in East Finchley, its extensive use of location filming, and its large, state-of-the-art studio at Walthamstow. He also investigates how the films were photographed and ‘staged’, their developing formal properties, and how the choice of genres shifted radically over time in an attempt to seek new audiences.

Theorising Material Ecocriticism: From Abstract to Concrete

The material-turn in the millennial period brought in newer insights in the understanding of the relationship between the material and its users. It would be interesting to explore the trajectory from this point, for the New Materialism that came about was founded on drawing from multifarious disciplines – natural sciences, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, history, geology and cultural studies. Today, the theoretical framework of Ecocriticism has adopted several tenets of New Materialism and has evolved into ‘Material Ecocriticism’. The present paper aims to study the latest development of ecocriticism in association with materialism, while paying particular heed to how ‘matter’ plays a pivotal role in constructing and communicating narratives. The study also looks at reading matter as an active agent in propelling any alterations in our relationship with nature. Along with a quick rereading of William Blake’s selected poems, the study proceeds to highlight the importance of accurate interpretations that could bring about considerable changes in our attitudes toward the environment.

DIDACTICS OF LOGIC IN KEN SCHOOLS AND THE CONCEPTION OF LOGICIN THE "ENCYCLOPÉDIE OU DICTIONNAIRE UNIVERSEL RAISONNÉ"

The paper describes the conception of logic in Polish didactics authored by the Commission of National Education (KEN), an important educational institution of the European Enlightenment. Since the documents of the Commission refer to a vision of science presented by such influential works then as the Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire universel raisonné [Great French Encyclopedia], the paper compares the requirements from the Commission’s programmer with the encyclopaedic entries that entail logical problems broadly understood. It turns out that the Commission, following the Encyclopédie, not only recommended a list of textbooks of logic but also shared its eclectic vision of logic. Although it is characteristic of modernity to take a relative approach to the importance of traditional logic, transformed into science on method, or literally an outline of epistemology, understood according to É. Condillac as a specific form of metaphysics, nevertheless some elements of logic were eclectically made valid. This logic, from the times of I. Kant, has been defined as formal logic. Practical logical skills were preferred to the knowledge of logical theories. At the same time attention was paid to the meaning of natural logical skills, and drills in logical reasoningwhen studying languages and mathematics. Despite preferences for the analytical method they also noticed the importance of synthetic method. It seems also that although the documents of the Commission do not say anything about the teaching of syllogistic issues, in didactic practice inspired by the Encyclopédie in the schools controlled by the Commission, the room was made to teach these problems. Condillac’s book was preferred in the schools controlled by the Commission, nevertheless, it was not, as in the case of other textbooks, a must on the reading list, an obligatory reading matter, therefore it was not published in Poland. The conception of logic presented by the Commission as modelled on the Encyclopédie managed to avoid the one-sidedness of Condillac’s approach, the approach that in fact eliminated the teaching of logic.

Osip Mandelstam in the French Anthologies of Russian Poetry (1925–1970)

The fates and fortunes of any national literature in a foreign culture is a multifaceted subject. And this is where the perception of Russian culture in France belongs. In France, the general public became aware of the life and works of Osip Mandelstam in the early seventies, when Nadezhda Mandelstam’s memoirs were published. Before 1970, only some translations of Mandelstam’s poems, the first one made by Chuzeville back in 1925, found their way to periodicals and anthologies. Information about the poet was spread to a great degree thanks to anthologies, as befits this genre of reading matter. During that period, the publishers of anthologies could either collaborate with translators (Slonim, Reavey), or translate the poetry themselves (Rais, Granoff). Journal articles and translations chime in and resonate with anthological publications.

Little Pamphlets and Story Books

Chapter 10 charts the development of the little pamphlets and booklets printed in early modern Scotland. Most were produced from single sheets of paper and sometimes from half-sheets. They contained works of edification, instruction, and entertainment. Some of these ‘story books’ were reprinted from the English market and others were of Scottish provenance; some were in verse and others in prose. Their contents included sermons, godly tales, and collections of songs or ‘garlands’, together with compilations of humorous anecdotes and jests. During the eighteenth century these small tracts became one of the most popular forms of reading matter and they remained so into the nineteenth century, when they first came to be known in Scotland as ‘chapbooks’.

Introduction

The introduction to this book argues that no general study of cheap print and popular literature has yet been undertaken for Scotland in the period between the advent of the nation’s first presses in the early sixteenth century and the eve of the French Revolution in the late eighteenth. It demonstrates that far more of this kind of ephemeral work aimed at a wide audience was once produced than has now survived and that the scale of its output has been insufficiently appreciated. The book sets out to show that Scotland both produced and imported a far more extensive range of reading matter for the mass market than has been acknowledged and that no understanding of contemporary society can be complete without it.