Reply to Post going around saying kids don’t need to learn how to read until 10 or 13?

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[quote=Anonymous]That sounds like, as others have said, some group with a specific agenda is pushing some bad science.

There is some evidence that kids can benefit by being allowed to work on reading skills at an older age (so like 6-7 versus 3-5). I know this school of thought is popular in a lot of European early education programs, and they don't do as much of the ABC drilling at an early age there as most US schools do. The idea is to let kids learn experientially through playing and teach reading skills when they start to express an interest, rather than at a set age.

In the US, you see this in private Waldorf schools in particular. Some other ECE programs have similar philosophies, but my experience is that they still teach reading skills earlier because it stresses parents out if their kids aren't learning at all by 1st grade.

Personally, I think as long as you don't take the joy out of reading, there are a lot of benefits to starting reading skills at 2-3 with the ABCs and building from there. A good ECE teacher will know how to keep it fun and make it into a game, and also know not to push kids who are getting bored or frustrated with it. I do think parents freaking out about their ECE kids "falling behind" by 6 months to a  year could stand to have a little perspective -- that's really not a big deal at the ECE level and as long as you are still reading to your kids and talking to them so they continue to have an interest in books and learn new language, it probably will have no effect long-term. But that doesn't mean we should stop teaching reading in ECE, it means we all need to relax a little bit about the impact of the pandemic on kid's academic schedules. I'm far more concerned about mental health issues with families, and how the stress of the pandemic, distance learning, and lack of childcare is impacting families' abilities to function and maintain emotional stability. Homeschooling is not a longterm solution for the vast majority of those families and it's ridiculous to pitch it that way.[/quote]

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