by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: October 10, 2010

I credit the Internet-not books-with inspiring my eldest daughter to learn to read. Her efforts began at age 3. She wanted so earnestly to navigate the vast Internet library of children's websites, to read online stories, game story lines, and instructions. She moved on to online encyclopedias such as the "Monsterpedia" and Myth Web.

I, too, read volumes of information online. I've got several browser windows open as I alternately read an article and write this one.

As an education writer, I often encounter statistics of falling reading skills. I wonder, how can that be? When did learning to read become difficult? Reading is a basic skill. It's simple. It comes naturally, doesn't it?

In his book Learning All the Time, education reformer John Holt remarked on a news article that listed 500 individual skills children need to master in the process of learning to read. Seriously. I’m shaking my head with incomprehension.

I can only conclude that conventional instruction has gotten between children and learning to read by complicating it, by breaking it into 500 individual progressive skills, and by putting pressure on kids to make that progress on schedule. Have you read an "early reader" book lately? Children today are typically given books dumbed down to their presumed reading level.

I remember a documentary about teens who were just learning to read. One 17-year-old boy demanded, "Why didn't anyone tell me about this book?" He had finally found something worth learning to read.

Nowadays, at age 8 my daughter reads everything (i.e., young adult novels, encyclopedias, magazines, video games….) I said to her the other day, “Did you know that one of our ancestors may have been the secret identity of Shakespeare?”

She said, “William Stanley?”

I can only imagine that she collected that bit of information from our big book of Shakespeare which she uses to reference the “double, double toil and trouble” witch’s spell, as needed.

Now, about the importance of reading: I want to make the point that the ability to read represents passive literacy. We read other people’s thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Speaking and writing represent active literacy. We tell our stories and express our thoughts, feelings, and ideas through spoken and written language.

Why does conventional schooling focus so heavily on reading? It intends for students to “receive an education,” not distract from that purpose by encouraging creative thinking and expression. No talking in class! There’s no time for questions.

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