Symposium: Reader Interest in Science - Young People

Zim, Herbert

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1488 Copy

Description

Title

Symposium: Reader Interest in Science - Young People

Author(s)

Zim, Herbert

Issue Date

1960

Keyword(s)

Libraries --Special collections --Science

Abstract

In considering young people's interest in science, I intend to include people from the sixth grade level to senility. The matter of definition of children, young people, and adults is not too much of a problem because the whole concept of age level and grade placement of materials has had a severe shock during the past ten years. A few years ago you could pick up a book and find clearly stated on the jacket that this was for seven year olds, or this was for fourth grade children. Today you will find that the designators have disappeared and it is difficult to find out for whom a book is intended and why. When you examine the interests of adults you find that they have basic problems that occupy their attention, e.g., the matter of earning a living, of adult responsibility, concern for the future, and the like. When it comes to a curiosity and general interest in the world around, the knowing of things for their own sake, the subjects that interest adults are not the kinds of things that press upon them for economic or other reasons. The differences between adult interests and young people's interests are very small. The same kind of curiosity that makes an adult read something that Watson Davis 1 editors get in the newspaper is about the same level of curiosity that makes young people do the same thing. Once at the level where vocabulary is not difficult, roughly about the fourth, fifth, or sixth grade or thereabouts, the interest picture irons itself out pretty much between adults and younger people.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (7th : 1960)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1488

Copyright and License Information

Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1959.

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