Dear Time-Reader

I have just been looking through a book which should interest all TIME-readers, especially those who teach, have children in secondary school, or are members of P.T.A.s, school boards, and other educational organizations.

The book is Better Learning Through Current Materials (Stanford University Press, $3), written by members of the California Council on Improvement of Instruction and edited by Lucien Kinney and Katharine Dresden. (The Saturday Review of Literature not long ago listed it as one of the important educational books of 1949.)

Better Learning reports on a project which has been in the works for four years: exposing secondary school pupils to current materials, a phrase which educators use to describe magazines, newspapers, radio recordings, and kindred study helps--as distinguished from textbooks. The book compares the progress of these students with similar groups which made little or no use of current materials.

The California Council is a voluntary organization of teachers who were in at the beginning of the experiment, became so enthusiastic about it that they devoted their own time to writing this handbook on the use of current materials for their fellow-teachers everywhere--and TIME Inc. is proud to have played a small part in their project.

When it began, it was almost inevitable that TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE, and MARCH OF TIME should be approached for basic material and cooperation. Since 1936, TIME Inc.'s Educational Bureau has provided not only our magazines, but additional teaching aids, maps, films, outlines, and the TIME news quizzes to schools all over the U.S. These teacher-and-student helps were among the first materials requested by the California State Department of Education when it began its experiment in 1946. and have been used by it ever since.

Now in its fourth year, there is overwhelming evidence that the purposes of the study are being achieved. To my knowledge, this is the first comprehensive experiment which, by actually checking results, year after year, has proved the use of current materials to be of definite help, not only in social studies, but in English, mathematics, science and many other subjects.

Two examples: one Social Studies class in San Jose took up the topic of elections. The students, reading about the low numbers of registered voters in their town, went out, rang doorbells, and played a part in increasing the registrations for the November 1948 elections by 4,000. An English class in Fortuna. fascinated by the building of a new dam in their county, interviewed engineers, studied blueprints, took pictures, and wrote and sold a magazine article on their experience. In San Diego, a science teacher said:

"In the three years that T have used current materials, I have sent out my classes feeling they were better prepared for factual, functional understanding of science in the world they would meet than any other classes I have had."

A significant finding of the project was that timid, reticent, below-average students showed a much greater tendency to "come out of their shells," and join group activities and discussions; and far more chances presented themselves for above-average students to exercise leadership and responsibility. Both sides of the desk--teachers and students--profited by a much happier, more productive learning situation all around. Most important, the California project's gains were not won at the expense of traditional achievements.

The current-materials boys & girls reported that it was much easier to get their fathers and mothers to help them with their homework.

Cordially,

James A. Linen

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