READING: The golden key

I very much did appreciate your editorial last Sunday. I think you hit the nail on the head. If a family reads to their children and helps them learn to read before they enter school then the child will do well in school no matter the type of school, public or private. Millions of dollars have been spent on studying schooling and hundreds of suggestions have been made, yet our schools seem to be stuck in a rut. I think partly because our emphasis has been on the wrong end of the schooling. We seem to concentrate more on high school because we know that if we can help a student perform better in high school we will see immediate results in overall test scores.

Really, we need to start with first grade. Our kids have struggled with learning to read ever since we abandoned phonics as the method of teaching learning to read. Just hanging a few phonics charts around in the classroom is not enough. We need a complete system of teaching phonics. You will find that this is the method used to teach reading in most private schools as well as home schools, and the children do far better. Note the children who have won the spelling contests over the past few years. Many of them have been homeschooled.

But even phonics will not help if the parents are not supportive and help the child read at home. They go together.

A letter to the editor asking for folks who would help as tutors. I think that is a great idea. I also think that high school students can help elementary kids with reading. This not only helps the younger kids, but is a help for the high school kids as well. When I taught school the older kids were very happy to be asked to help with reading.

Teaching phonics is a simple solution, but schools reject the idea. Look at it this way: If the child does not learn to read, then more teachers are hired to help them learn and many children are classified as learning disabled. So, the teachers, colleges, the unions and the textbook publishers have no incentive to improve as the worse the child does the more their business will prosper.

One thing online is a program called Starfall. It can be found online at www.starfall.com. It is an interactive program where the child can teach himself. Some children think it is a game and insist on spending time with the program each day. Give it a try and you will appreciate the result.

It is time that our schools recognized the nature of the problem and work against the unions and the colleges to help the children learn to read. Such a simple solution it is, too bad we cannot use it to solve our reading problems. If the child learns to read by the end of the third grade he is a step above others all the rest of his education. If he does not learn to read, he is a discipline problem all through school, and as your editorial points out, many of them will end in jail. Do we want our children to learn to read, or do we want them to end up in jail. You decide.

JIM HOLLINGSWORTH

Coeur d’Alene