sbtmom,
I knew about the industrial roots of our education system, but had never really thought about how that relates to teaching reading. Very interesting.

Like dajohnson60 it makes me think of my DS in 1st grade. His teacher asked me to talk to him one day because he did such a terrible job of reading aloud. He was reading in a really high pitched fast voice and was next to impossible to understand. When I asked him about it, he said that the books were really stupid so he was reading them that way.