Comments on: Teaching Babies To Read. A Dumb Idea?

By: David James

David James — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:02:42 +0000

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.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:56:50 +0000

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

By: Erin

Erin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:07:03 +0000

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.