SRA Reading Laboratory
Did you experience the SRA Reading Laboratory at school? Rather than being a box of nostalgia, it’s a box of misery for me. The reading program began in 1938 Chicago as the Science Research Associates. It was taken over by IBM in 1964, then by Maxwell Communications Corporation in 1988. That company was absorbed into the McGraw-Hill publishing corporation in the early 2000s, and the program still exists today, unfortunately.
I was introduced to the program at John McCrae public school in the early 1970s. Instead of teaching me reading skills like sustained silent reading, critical reading, critical thinking, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and word analysis it taught me the viciously competitive race of school. It taught me to dislike reading by turning reading not just into a chore, but into a contes and a competition. Competition is an inappropriate, destructive model of human relationship. Enjoying the challenge? Nah! It just made me feel inferior.
It taught me to dislike reading by turning reading
not just into a chore, but into a contest. As soon as you turn something into a competition you lose me.
You know, for me, as soon as you turn something into a competition you lose me. Where’s the fun in that? I’ve talked about this before with organized sports, but it pertains to all aspects of life, too. My purpose in life is primarily to mind my own business. The idea of competing with others for anything is ridiculous.
Children in my class who excelled at the SRA project quickly began sabotaging the color-coded story cards in order to prevent others from catching up to them. It was entirely about status, vile and excruciating! To me, the SRA Reading Laboratory is a great example of a failure created by people educated beyond their intelligence - maybe executives rather than educators. For me, the SRA Reading Laboratory was straight up child abuse. But I could be wrong. Maybe some of you had a wonderful time with the set.