Although children appear to live within the framework which the grown-ups have prepared, they actually create their own world in relation to circumstances. In the world of their own creation, which is sometimes beyond the adults' comprehension, there is reality for the children who live in the forefront of the circumstances. The same thing can be said in the reading. Children give a new concept to a word, based on their experience. Even though it is not an interpretation with the right procedure of thinking, it is his/her "reading." Adults should not spoil it under the pretext of education. - This is the major premise. However, from the viewpoint of the teachers who are actually doing the work of education, this may seem to be an idealism of grown-up people who are too understanding. In reality, it's too late to say that the children's world is independent from the adults' and has a value of its own. The present situation does not allow the teachers to be idealistic. As for reading, children, asking their teacher for the correct interpretation, try to convince themselves by labeling the work with a commentary based upon virtue. It has become difficult for them to establish the fictitious experience, or experience of dissimilation from the action of reading. We should discuss, in the level of teaching materials and also of teaching and learning, how children can establish a world by reading and live in it, or how they can create a fictitious world and make it an object to criticize, while participating in it.
View full abstract