OL gay Help your child learn to read (UPI) — A U.S. reading specialist says parents can help their children leam to read by constantly talking and reading to them. **Reading is all around us,” said Carole Riggs, a consultant from Dekalb County in Georgia and author of a new textbook series on the subject. ““You can read the labels in the grocery store or stop signs on the ride home. **You should spend a lot of time talking to children and listening. Sometimes we just talk to the child rather than listening to him.” Riggs said parents should start educating their children from in- fancy, surrounding them with things that challenge the mind and cause them to think. “‘Reading means getting mean- ing from a page, not just getting words,” she said. ‘‘Children can decode words but often cannot comprehend. We need to recog- nize our ultimate goal is to get meaning.” Riggs, who did her doctoral thesis at the University of Georgia on parental involvement in read- ing, has developed a five-part program called CHILD. ““C’’ stands for communicate,”’ she said. ‘You should commu- nicate acceptance and positive thinking.” She said “‘H’ means the parent should help his child understand word relationships such as on-off and oral language development. BOOKS “I stands for interest. “You should interest your child in reading by reading to him,’’ she said. ‘‘Help him to learn what language is and that what is said can be read.” - “L’ is for library. Riggs said children should be surrounded by books. She recommends letting children have their own personal libraries. “D” is for developing a sense of responsibility. Riggs said pa- rents should ‘help the child recognize -he is responsible for himself and his actions.” She stresses the importance of parents as role models. Parents attitudes toward reading — espe- cially if parents dislike reading — will be picked up by the child, she added. Timing is also important, she said. “There is a teachable moment, when the child shows inquisitive- ness and wants to learn. Rather than stopping children in the mid- dle of play to teach them some- thing, you should answer ques- tions and respond to their in- terests.”” She said involvement also helps parents recognize the child as a person. **They’re sometimes seen as a thing or an object, not as a person with feelings and personality,”’ she said. ‘Educational games help parents become aware of the uniqueness of the invididual.”’ A summer remembered My Grandfather’s Cape Breton, by Clive Doucet, .McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 224 pages, $12.95 cloth. Clive Doucet, -whose first novel, Disneyland, Please was on the short list last year for the Books in Canada Award for First Novels, didn’t just dream of a Nova Scotia vacation. At the age . of 12, in 1958, he went down to the west coast of Cape Breton to spend the first of many summers with his paternal grandfather, then 78 years old, but still fit and active, on his small farm in Grand Etang — a kind of farm that hardly exists any more. Clive, brought up in Ottawa, was bright but hadn’t done well at school and was discontented and frustrated by pressure at home. His father, an economist with the federal government, had left the farm as a young man, as so many do, but had the good sense to realize that Clive could benefit from that same farm life that he had given up, and could learn especially from Grandpa William. Not merely French, which these de- scendats of the Acadians still spoke, but lessons of life: of hard work in the outdoors and building a community, of giving and re- ceiving help and also of self-suf- ficiency, of spontaneous fun and regulated discipline. Now, in his 30s, Clive Doucet has set it all down, has relived, for himself and for us, the day-to-day experience of that first summer in his grand- father’s Cape Breton. The story is full of charming and instructive incident. The adult Clive seems to have no dif- ficulty in recalling and repro- ducing the conversations and moods, the sense of place and time, of that long-ago summer; one feels that the picture, though perhaps idealized in memory, is a true one. Occasionally there are anachronisms. On the whole Doucet has succeeded in recre- ating the sights and sounds, and most important, his feelings and changing behavior, of that forma- tive summer in Cape Breton. Perhaps one simple exchange between Clive and his grand- father may serve to illustrate their relationship and.the older man’s character. Clive wanted to know which job Grandpa had liked best before he started farming — he'd been a miner and a road crew foreman among other things. Fi- nally Grandpa said that his favo- Tite job had been driving horses in the races at Inverness: “That must have been great!"* I said. *‘What was it like?” Grandfather shrugged and went back to his chopping. *‘What was it like, Grandpa?” “Tcan't tell you what it was like because I've never driven ina race at Inverness." “I don’t understand.” **But it would have been my favourite job,’ smiled Grandfather. — J.W. Hill SQONSULLEUEDOUAESODUGEAUCGDLAURELOUEDOUOLULCLOULOONCSELOGAUQUCEOONSCUAEOEDOUCESOULEDOCUAUDOUDEDOGSERUDONLADOOSOREUALGUOAE PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 11, 1980—Page 6 “7 my: ro ‘ well Personalitiesin the early days of U.S. labor: Samuel Gompers, Mark Hanna and Eugene Debs who once ran {or U.S. president from his prison cell, winning over one million votes. Labor’s political action born THE AFL IN THE PROGRES- SIVE ERA, 1910-1915: HISTORY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. Philip S. Foner. International Pub- lishers, New York, 1980. 293 pp. The history of the working class is the history of struggle. For over one hundred years, we have struggled against exploitation, against oppression, against ra- cism, against war. We have fought against all of the evils that have been visited upon us by a minority of people who are moti- vated by a greedy thirst fo profits. In many countries of the world, many of the worst of these strug- gles have been won by workers. They can now work for the peace- ful development of their own countries and of the world. We in North America must still work and fight to secure the ele- mentary rights for workers: the right to a job, the right to a healthy environment, to decent housing and education. Even the right to form a union is not guaranteed. The bitterest strikes of 1979- 1980 have been strikes over union security, something we had come to consider as an accepted start- ing point in labor-management re- lations. Philip Foner, in the fifth volume of his History of the Labor Movement in the United States, outlines two areas of battle in which the workers of that country engaged themselves. It does not take great imagination for the reader to see that the concerns of workers 70 years ago are the con- cerns of workers today. The first part of the book deals with the efforts of workers to or- ganize themselves to obtain legis- - lative improvements at the feder- al, state and municipal levels. Some of the typical demands that were advanced by labor at that time were: the right to recall elected representatives; universal and equal male and female suf- frage; the eight-hour day; a law to end abuse of injunctions; a cor- rupt practices law to include pub- lishing of campaign funds and contributions before elections. The fundamental goal of labor at the time, and the basis of all of its demands, was, according to Foner, ‘‘the central idea of liberating the nation from the cor- rupt alliance of big business and machine politics.”’ Labor made many significant gains in this field. The important lesson’ of these achievements, ’ though, is that they were not won by labor alone, nor by other re- form groups alone, but by the two working together in a common cause. The need for this type of united action is no less urgent today than it was 70 years ago. It becomes self-evident that only through united action around a common program can democratic Canadians win the fight against layoffs, factory closures, cut- backs in social spending, and the threat of war. The second part of the book deals with seven of the largest and most bitter strikes in the history of » the United States’ labor move- ment. In every case, the central issue was union security, the right of workers to organize them- selves and collectively fight to improve their working and living conditions. In every case, the full force of the state, the legislature, the police, the judiciary, the army, was thrown against them. FSRENCIS Fax To DEREGULATE CANADIAN CONTENT The violence that was used against workers simply because they stood=up for their rights is heart-breaking. The courage with which they faced this violence 1S inspiring. BOOKS Of particular interest to Cana- dian readers is the chapter on the — Colorado Miners’ Revolt. This | | ; | : } \ | : | { strike, against the Colorado Fuel — and Iron Company, owned by — Rockefeller, lasted for 15 months. — At least 66 men, women and chil- dren were killed, including 32 kil- led in the infamous Ludlow Mas- sacre. The union never did win recogntion there. Instead, the Miners were saddled with an In- dustrial Representation Plan, which represented the birth of company unions. This plan was cooked up for Rockefeller by none other than Mckenzie King, who received a sumptuous cash reward, returned to Canada, became our prime minister, communicated with a dead dog and other spirits, and hired- gangsters to break the Canadian Seamen’s Union, among other things. — Alan Pickersgill Shane i aod LG || 7 / yf Heys | Solin Hanly Morgan A new book by the president of the Canadian Peace Congress, 92 poems on the struggle for life, work, love, and peace. $4.00 at your progressive book store or by mail from the publisher (add one dollar for packaging and postage). Wellesley and Gardens Suite 301 671 Danforth Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4J 1L3