The thing that all the "it's perfectly fine if your child doesn't read till 10" people seem to forget about is that there are reams of evidence that in the aggregate, children who are not reading well by third grade do not catch up, and that they then are at MUCH higher risk of dropping out, even if they are not disadvantaged in other ways. I'm sure there are many exceptions to this rule, and little anecdotes are all well and good, but in a broad sense, yes, there is reason to be concerned when a child is not reading well or at all by age 8. The model does not work when applied nationwide. A child who goes to Waldorf school and who has college-educated parents who read to him or her every night and surround him/her with books and speak to him/her in beautiful vocabulary probably (in most cases, but not all--sometimes they miss LDs) will do just fine and maybe more than fine not reading till 10. It would be damned foolish to therefore yank researched and intensive reading instruction away from socioeconomically disadvantaged kis with HS dropout parents and no books in the house on the theory that they of course would do just as well as Waldorf kid without being taught these skills. Why no one gets this, I have no idea.
Last edited by ultramarina; 06/10/12 11:36 AM.
