One of the fallacies in Rachel Zivic's analysis is that she assumes there is one "right" way to read. This is an academic perspective and not very pragmatic.
In my daily job, I need to read a lot of material. Speed and the ability to rapidly extract essential points are far more important than deep comprehension.
A well-balanced society requires diversification. We need people with different variants of skill across all fields.
The key to effective teaching is to feed the natural passions of children. If a kid loves to read, it's ridiculous to withhold books. If a kid loves to pore over complex equations and guess at their meaning, it's silly to tell him he can't.
Many of the world's greatest geniuses were once children who had the passion to learn and pushed themselves well beyond the limits of their understanding and eventually beyond the understanding of everyone else as well.
The ability to stretch beyond the need for prerequisites and synthesize knowledge for oneself is a valuable skill. It should be encouraged wherever it's found.
