Quote:
Originally Posted by MandoMan
Blame Parents Not Teachers.
The Covid shutdown is a sad excuse. Parents were home with their kids for months and could have been sitting down with them and reading to them and helping them read, one on one. Too many parents think it’s up to the teachers to teach, but really parents should be the primary teachers of their children. Reading to children for an hour or more every day from when they are about one leads to their eagerness to learn to read on their own. Shows like Sesame Street can teach a lot but don’t make up for parents reading aloud.
This isn’t a matter of money. There are lots of public libraries. There are books sales with books going for a dollar. The failure to read to children is found in prosperous homes as well as impoverished homes. It requires dedication of time by parents.
Later, it’s important to give kids time and incentive to read. Lots of kids spend so much time playing sports or hanging out with friends or texting or watching cute things on their phones that they don’t have time to read books.
I taught College English for about forty years. In most cases, the students who started class reading well were the ones whose parents helped them develop a habit of reading. Every time I surveyed the students, I discovered that about 10% of my college freshmen had never read an entire book outside of class assignments. Those were the students most likely to drop out. But I discovered that if I assigned exciting books, I could get them hooked on reading. So I gave up teaching Medieval Literature and started teaching Detective Fiction and The Thriller and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and things like that to freshmen who needed a literature credit. It worked. But how much better for them if their parents had guided them.
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That is a case of adapting the school to the NEEDS of the student. Unfortunately, in high school and below the needs of the student MUST conform to the needs (for low cost and low property taxes) of the school board.