Teaching Babies To Read. A Dumb Idea?
A news story about teaching babies to read caught my eye. According to infant researcher Dr. Robert Titzer and a national panel of reading specialists, most of our reading problems would be eliminated if we started to teach reading earlier. Dr Titzer has developed an approach that can be used with babies as young as 9 months old.
I don’t wish to knock Dr Titzer’s knowledge but there is an obvious flaw in his argument that we should teach reading as early as possible. Finland has a literacy rate of 99.9% yet they don’t start teach children to read until they are seven years old. In fact, four of the top ten countries don’t begin formal reading instruction until age seven.
Reading requires several physical and mental abilities to be developed before it can be learnt. The child must be able to hear the differences in the phonic sounds correctly; they must be able to reliably track their eyes across the page; they must be able to sit still and concentrate; and they must be able to comprehend what is being read. These are all skills that improve with age.
In the UK and USA education systems that teach reading about the age of five, those children that are slow physical and mental developers will struggle to learn to read. This delay casts a long shadow other their education and their self-confidence. In the Finish system, all children barring those with extreme developmental issues, have matured enough to learn to read.
Further Information: School Starting Age: European Policy and Recent Research [ PDF ], How in the World Do Students Read? by W.B. Elley
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June 14th, 2006
Dyslexia
Comments on: Teaching Babies To Read. A Dumb Idea?
I disagree with many of the assumptions that underpin this article. Babies and toddlers are geniuses at learning language; we learn to speak between the ages of 1 and 3, and I think that’s the best time to learn to read, too. Both my kids did just fine learning to read before they were three, because I didn’t actually have to sit them down to teach them. They just picked it up because I made the symbols (letters and words) an explicit part of their play. The author of Native Reading, Tim Kailing, goes more into the science of it, and I think folks on this forum would be interested in his chapter 7: Can Native Reading Prevent Dyslexia? It’s presented as a hypothesis, but it make lots of sense to me.
Posted by: Erin January 23rd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
The truth is that Finnish students do not receive formal education until they are seven. Many of the Finnish children learn how to read way before that. “One explanation for the Finns’ success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425355065601997.html
Posted by: Ashley May 14th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
my parents taught me to read in my infancy, and my IQ was 176 exiting High School. I breeze effortlessly through the toughest classes, and regularly impress my college teachers with my verbal and written skills, while easily maintaining a stiff 4.0, because in this school, I can’t get a higher GPA than that. I haven’t ever failed any sort of test in school, and I’m currently working on my bachelor’s in electronic engineering. People say that I’m a genius on a daily basis- i can read a technical manual once, and retain the information or use it. Honestly, I feel slower to the punch than others, but my immediate understanding of verbal or written communications gives me an edge in every area of my life, even including art. I don’t think I’m a genius, like people tell me. My success has much less to do with brain capacity than language comprehension. The simple fact is that while people are studying, they come upon words they don’t understand, and one misunderstood word can confuse a person enough to blow a subject. It’s an axiom: you must build a sturdy foundation for a sturdy frame. On a related side note, my brother’s son was born autistic, and we still taught him to read before he was 2 years old. He still shows all signs of autism, but he has the verbal capacity of a normal child. If we can teach an autistic toddler to read, any healthy baby can read, and we’re stupid for thinking our children can’t ingest knowledge from the moment they take their first breath of fresh air. If you think it’s stupid to teach your baby to read, that’s just ignorance speaking… perhaps you should have learned to read earlier yourself.
Posted by: David James July 9th, 2009 at 6:02 am
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