Exactly-- and the fact that the author seems to presume that such feats are the outer LIMIT of what children are capable of at five or six years old... just... well, it makes me sad.
Children like mine (and many parents here) learn rather quickly from such educators that their authentic skills (literacy in this instance, but also in other domains) must not be "real" and that they should hide them or risk "intervention" to "fix" them as learners. I truly wonder if this kind of attitude isn't what sows the seeds of imposter syndrome.
I wish that educators could set aside what they know for a change, and examine what is actually in front of them in any particular child. Broad over-generalizations aren't really helping anyone. How ridiculous would it be to state a logical statement which is diametrically opposed to this author's clear thesis, after all?
Oh, illiterate adults can't really exist. They're just not giving themselves enough credit for comprehension. They've all been taught to read, after all... therefore they all possess basic decoding skills that have been developed through years of exposure to print in their daily lives. Of course they can read.
Sounds pretty ridiculous in the face of adults who genuinely cannot decode, (due to disability or other circumstance) right? But I don' see that statement as being fundamentally different than this author's. It's based on parallel assumptions about development, some of which are clearly flawed.
Last edited by HowlerKarma; 04/11/14 10:28 AM. Reason: because
