Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research "Reading evens out" research?

Luria's work with preliterate peasants before and after literacy had been acquired led him to conclude that literacy actualized a kind of abstract thought that was entirely absent prior to literacy.

This work was not published by the Soviets for over 40 years because it was deemed insulting to peasants (a Marxist taboo). But his empirical results stand for themselves.

While, obviously, literacy isn't the be all and end all - preliterate societies invented wheels, agriculture and metallurgy literacy does appear to allow abstract concepts like 'tool', 'circle', 'rectangle' to emerge in a subject's consciousness.

Given all the above, I find the it illogical that educators effectively insist on making early readers 'wait in the lobby' until the majority of kids their age are reading instead of letting them proceed on with their educations once abstract concepts are more readily synthesized.

So one thing AR does is keep track of how many words total you read for the school year in the books you read and get tested on. Last year my son read 5 million AR words (not counting things he read that weren't tested by AR). The most in the entire school. Some kids read a couple thousand. They will never even out with him because the gap started at age 4 and his reading pace at this point is uncatchable.

At some point it evens out, though maybe not until HS or college. And take some of these reading levels with a grain of salt...middle kid was evaluated at a junior in college to graduate level in reading in 8th grade. What does that even mean? She should read PhD theses? I think not.

Did the school do anything special for her? No, but I don't think she has been damaged for life. Let the kid read outside school at his/her level. At some point, as they get older, they will be in with others who read/comprehend at that level and it will be better.

It is not the reading that is really the issue it is the Lindsey behind the statement.

Neither of my kids have been early readers. The oldest picked it up very quickly the younger is a bit slower but OK.

It kinda seems that way, because modern journalism and literature are written at an 8th-grade level. But hand the average adult some of the classics, and watch what happens.

Unfortunately, some schools are beginning to collect selected passages from classics and place them into anthologies... often designed around a theme providing social and/or political influence.

After reading possibly 5 - 20 pages of a classic, which has been removed from the context of the entire work, and transplanted into the context of the themed anthology, students may feel they have read and are familiar with the work. Rather than piquing a student's curiosity to read the works in their entirety, the net effect may often be inoculating or vaccinating the student against the classics.

Master of none, we did raise our expectations at some point. Middle kid is now in 11th grade and takes all AP/Honors (four APs this year, takes two foreign languages). This was the kid that didn't appear to be that bright when she was young, and I declared that she was not college material when she was four.

Her HS combined English/social studies course (offered 9th-12th for those in the gifted program) has a lot of high level reading and there are some very sharp kids in this class - makes for some great classroom discussions.

We also found out that you should raise expectations on all fronts. DH declared that middle kid wouldn't be able to keep up with athletics - even rec sports - beyond the age of 12. In 10th grade, she was the only sophomore to make varsity in her fall sport. She also plays a travel sport (a spring sport for HS), and is going on her 5th year of travel. So yep, we realized that we set expectations too low when she was little.