I actually think that if children are not burning to read and/or figuring it out by themselves, most parents probably should not teach their children to read. Some kids learn to read really easily, but most do not. Teaching many children to read is actually quite difficult, and because most parents do not themselves remember the mechanisms and processes by which they learned to read, they can seriously botch the process. The result may be a kid who just doesn't learn to read until they go to school, but it can also be a kid who learns to associate reading with strife and struggle and parents asking them to do things that don't make any sense, and who has decided that reading is just hard. These kids tend to turn into reluctant readers, and it's a lot more difficult to get them reading comfortably than it is if they come to school simply having been read to, and raised in literacy-friendly environments.
This isn't to say that a parents of kids who are panting to read, are asking about words and sounds, and are figuring out things for themselves should not encourage and foster this. But readiness for reading comes at different ages for different children, and teaching reading is not really an easy or straightforward thing. If you know how to read, however, reading to or with your child can be much simpler, and, in the long run, equally beneficial.
Ditto math. Some kids pick up numeracy pretty easily and intuitively. Some don't. There are tricks to teaching numbers and their relationships, and not every parent has the understanding of numbers or of pedagogy to successfully teach these concepts to every child (not every teacher does, either, but they do teach a few things about how kids learn in teacher training.
So I don't necessarily thing parents should make sure kids know how to read and how to calculate before they send them to school. Given the resources they need, teachers are pretty good at this. I'd be a lot happier if parents would support the teachers and do stuff like the reading at home with their kids that you mentioned (most schools here have a book-a-day programme, too. The books are often pretty dreadful, but they're appropriate to the child's reading level, and therefore probably won't cause horrible frustration.), and playing maths games and modelling literate and numerate behaviour, so that children acquired a context in which to see their emerging skills.
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Date: 2010-11-21 08:29 pm (UTC)This isn't to say that a parents of kids who are panting to read, are asking about words and sounds, and are figuring out things for themselves should not encourage and foster this. But readiness for reading comes at different ages for different children, and teaching reading is not really an easy or straightforward thing. If you know how to read, however, reading to or with your child can be much simpler, and, in the long run, equally beneficial.
Ditto math. Some kids pick up numeracy pretty easily and intuitively. Some don't. There are tricks to teaching numbers and their relationships, and not every parent has the understanding of numbers or of pedagogy to successfully teach these concepts to every child (not every teacher does, either, but they do teach a few things about how kids learn in teacher training.
So I don't necessarily thing parents should make sure kids know how to read and how to calculate before they send them to school. Given the resources they need, teachers are pretty good at this. I'd be a lot happier if parents would support the teachers and do stuff like the reading at home with their kids that you mentioned (most schools here have a book-a-day programme, too. The books are often pretty dreadful, but they're appropriate to the child's reading level, and therefore probably won't cause horrible frustration.), and playing maths games and modelling literate and numerate behaviour, so that children acquired a context in which to see their emerging skills.