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I find it ridiculous that the author had not already taught their children to read prior to kindergarten.

tialaramex 3y ago
Children's early aptitudes for all these non-trivial skills vary enormously. There's also minimal later consequence. Basically the fact your five year old can multiply and mine can't count properly actually isn't strongly predictive for which of them is going to be a Fields Medal winner. Kids who exhibit interest in acquiring written language skills should be encouraged, but so should kids who are interested in dancing, or playing a musical instrument, or a hundred other things. Unless your kid's main hobby is torturing flies or something they should be encouraged to do things they enjoy, especially before school makes them do some things that, inevitably, they don't enjoy, whether that's writing things down, climbing, or learning about stuff that happened a long time ago.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  > Unless your kid's main hobby is torturing flies or something That's called research on model organisms. As long as the kid has gotten proper approval by the ethics review board, they'll do just fine.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  It sounds like the author didn't even attempt to teach their children how to read prior to entering 1st grade, due to the "unspoken contract between public schools and parents is that schools will teach their children to read." Seems nuts to me, I thought the unspoken contract is that parents read to their kids at night and teach them to read at the same time. I guess the author thinks only rich parents can do that (come on now..)
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    Teaching is a skill, which is why we don't ordinarily just let random people off the street start teaching kids. So you may not be any good at it. Also the kids vary a lot in what they're interested in and what they exhibit a natural aptitude for. You seem to suppose that all the world's four year olds want to learn to read and are naturally good at that, but, the evidence strongly disagrees. If you only needed, say, 10% of your population as literate scribes then relying on this approach would work, but our society is predicated on an overwhelming majority of literate adults.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > Teaching is a skill, which is why we don't ordinarily just let random people off the street start teaching kids. We do in fact. Parents (what you term "random people off the street") are expected to take an active role in educating their children. Ask public school teachers in America what frustrates them the most and the two top answers will be their administrators and parents who aren't involved in the education of their children. Parents like the article author who think there is a "unspoken contract" that schools will handle all education are the bane of teachers. Teachers hate people like this. I have several school teachers in my family and they all rant nonstop about parents like this. If a parent tries and fails to teach their child how to read before the first grade, that's fine. They can let the teachers know that and the teachers can start giving that child special attention right away. But a parent who doesn't even try because they think the education of their child is the sole responsibility of the school are the kind of parents that teachers hate. It's neglect, not legally actionable neglect but certainly neglect nevertheless. By the time a child gets to the first grade they are already 6 or 7 years old and the window for easy reading acquisition is almost closed. The article author found this out too late and now her daughter still struggles to read. Incidentally... > When it became clear that my daughter was also among the roughly half of all kids who will not read fluidly without explicit phonics instruction, I left my job, in part to help. [...] My daughter’s progress has been slower, perhaps because her tutoring took place online. She left her job to help her daughter learn to read, yet her daughter is being tutored ineffectually on the internet. Why isn't she tutoring her daughter in person, if she left work to help? Because... > I left my job, in part to help. I also embarked on a doomed crusade to persuade our school’s administration that— Her idea of "leave work to help" apparently means leave work so she has more time to write angry emails at the school. The teachers must absolutely hate her. Yeah I get it, not everybody knows how to teach kids to read, but she took off work for this so she should have the time to figure it out. She should go to a public library and tell a librarian that she wants to use the phonics method to teach her child how to read. Librarians can direct her to appropriate books and probably give her a ton of supporting material as well. But she's not going to do this because she's locked into the mentality that teaching her kid to read isn't a job for her. She wants schools or internet tutors to do it for her, and when that doesn't work she takes to writing articles complaining about the situation instead of doing it herself. Meanwhile the days tick away and her daughter becomes less and less likely to ever read well.
- failrate 3y ago
  Fine, I find it absurd that the author did not already TRY teaching their kids to read prior to kindergarten.
gcanyon 3y ago
My parents tried to teach me to read at an early age, and it was a disaster. When I was about five the skill pretty much emerged, full formed and unprompted. I jumped from not reading at all to reading full novels in a few months. This pattern of me being incapable of learning pretty much anything from my parents continued for the rest of their lives. :-/

Children's early aptitudes for all these non-trivial skills vary enormously. There's also minimal later consequence. Basically the fact your five year old can multiply and mine can't count properly actually isn't strongly predictive for which of them is going to be a Fields Medal winner. Kids who exhibit interest in acquiring written language skills should be encouraged, but so should kids who are interested in dancing, or playing a musical instrument, or a hundred other things. Unless your kid's main hobby is torturing flies or something they should be encouraged to do things they enjoy, especially before school makes them do some things that, inevitably, they don't enjoy, whether that's writing things down, climbing, or learning about stuff that happened a long time ago.

zozbot234 3y ago
> Unless your kid's main hobby is torturing flies or something That's called research on model organisms. As long as the kid has gotten proper approval by the ethics review board, they'll do just fine.
mcpackieh 3y ago
It sounds like the author didn't even attempt to teach their children how to read prior to entering 1st grade, due to the "unspoken contract between public schools and parents is that schools will teach their children to read." Seems nuts to me, I thought the unspoken contract is that parents read to their kids at night and teach them to read at the same time. I guess the author thinks only rich parents can do that (come on now..)
- tialaramex 3y ago
  Teaching is a skill, which is why we don't ordinarily just let random people off the street start teaching kids. So you may not be any good at it. Also the kids vary a lot in what they're interested in and what they exhibit a natural aptitude for. You seem to suppose that all the world's four year olds want to learn to read and are naturally good at that, but, the evidence strongly disagrees. If you only needed, say, 10% of your population as literate scribes then relying on this approach would work, but our society is predicated on an overwhelming majority of literate adults.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > Teaching is a skill, which is why we don't ordinarily just let random people off the street start teaching kids. We do in fact. Parents (what you term "random people off the street") are expected to take an active role in educating their children. Ask public school teachers in America what frustrates them the most and the two top answers will be their administrators and parents who aren't involved in the education of their children. Parents like the article author who think there is a "unspoken contract" that schools will handle all education are the bane of teachers. Teachers hate people like this. I have several school teachers in my family and they all rant nonstop about parents like this. If a parent tries and fails to teach their child how to read before the first grade, that's fine. They can let the teachers know that and the teachers can start giving that child special attention right away. But a parent who doesn't even try because they think the education of their child is the sole responsibility of the school are the kind of parents that teachers hate. It's neglect, not legally actionable neglect but certainly neglect nevertheless. By the time a child gets to the first grade they are already 6 or 7 years old and the window for easy reading acquisition is almost closed. The article author found this out too late and now her daughter still struggles to read. Incidentally... > When it became clear that my daughter was also among the roughly half of all kids who will not read fluidly without explicit phonics instruction, I left my job, in part to help. [...] My daughter’s progress has been slower, perhaps because her tutoring took place online. She left her job to help her daughter learn to read, yet her daughter is being tutored ineffectually on the internet. Why isn't she tutoring her daughter in person, if she left work to help? Because... > I left my job, in part to help. I also embarked on a doomed crusade to persuade our school’s administration that— Her idea of "leave work to help" apparently means leave work so she has more time to write angry emails at the school. The teachers must absolutely hate her. Yeah I get it, not everybody knows how to teach kids to read, but she took off work for this so she should have the time to figure it out. She should go to a public library and tell a librarian that she wants to use the phonics method to teach her child how to read. Librarians can direct her to appropriate books and probably give her a ton of supporting material as well. But she's not going to do this because she's locked into the mentality that teaching her kid to read isn't a job for her. She wants schools or internet tutors to do it for her, and when that doesn't work she takes to writing articles complaining about the situation instead of doing it herself. Meanwhile the days tick away and her daughter becomes less and less likely to ever read well.
failrate 3y ago
Fine, I find it absurd that the author did not already TRY teaching their kids to read prior to kindergarten.

gcanyon 3y ago

My parents tried to teach me to read at an early age, and it was a disaster. When I was about five the skill pretty much emerged, full formed and unprompted. I jumped from not reading at all to reading full novels in a few months. This pattern of me being incapable of learning pretty much anything from my parents continued for the rest of their lives. :-/