> There's a lot of evidence that learning to read early can be detrimental in the long run. More and more of the educated parents I know are no longer focusing on teaching their preschoolers to read.
That's horrifying. Can't wait for the rest of us to have to clean up their experiment.
What are you basing that on? There is evidence that not teaching children to read until age 6 or 7 has an overall net benefit.
Many countries ranked very well for education, don't start formal education until age 7 (Finland and Sweden for instance). The children in these countries are taught to read later than in the US, but they do just as well or better on reading tests later in life.
Children in the US weren't taught to read until first grade a few generations ago. Hell, when I was in kindergarten, 25 years ago, we spent the whole year learning the alphabet--now kids are expected to know the alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten. There is no evidence that this is beneficial and plenty that it is harmful.
Why wait for the state to teach your kid to read? I wouldn't trust an elementary public school teacher to build IKEA furniture let alone teach my kid the most important skill he'll ever learn.
Most importantly, once they learn how to read they won't have to wait for or trust the state to teach them anything ever again; it's all there for free on the internet and in library books.
Care to cite some of this evidence? I was just reading about this and found zero evidence its somehow harmful and only anecdotal evidence that it is not beneficial and "evens out" later.
My strong opinion is that educationally, THE most important thing you must do with your child is TALK to them. From the beginning. From year 0. Discuss things with them. Let them soak as much understandable speech as they can between years 0 and 2. This will have a far more profound effect in their life rather than did they learn to read at 4 or 8 years of age.
Could you specify what is horrifying about the previous post? Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees? Like another poster stated, most kids in Finland do not start to formally learn to read until they are 6 (preschool, if the parents want so) and at the latest when they enter primary school (7). I would claim Finland has a pretty good public primary education system.
Pushing kids to do too much too soon has no advantages, imho. There are skills that are best started acquiring at a youngish age but you will have to convince me pretty hard that reading is one of them. Kids have this natural curiosity to an amazing variety of things. But what those things are can be quite random. The best way to have them learn something is to apply this natural curiosity - i.e. find what they are interested in - and the support them in this activity. This does not mean allowing them play videogames or watch cartoons whole the whole day.
I would say if the kids like it and want to then sure, teach them to read. But before 7, I would claim it is more valuable to find those things that they are really keen into and let them practice those. This creates a positive association to knowledge acquisition (the love of learning). And at that age they soak information and skills like sponges if they are motivated and have the mental capacity to grasp the concepts.
> Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees?
The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field (in math, physics, computer science or engineering) and getting to read early.
It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by age 8, is there enough time for you to grasp all of high school math and computer science by age 14, like Manjul Bhargava?
While I can imagine my hypothesis being true, that doesn't make it into an argument against later reading age. It just means that for a group of kids this might not the best decision. (And since most of us think of themselves as the "smart kids", maybe that's why a lot of us here are opposed to it.)
learc83|11 years ago
Many countries ranked very well for education, don't start formal education until age 7 (Finland and Sweden for instance). The children in these countries are taught to read later than in the US, but they do just as well or better on reading tests later in life.
Children in the US weren't taught to read until first grade a few generations ago. Hell, when I was in kindergarten, 25 years ago, we spent the whole year learning the alphabet--now kids are expected to know the alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten. There is no evidence that this is beneficial and plenty that it is harmful.
aianus|11 years ago
Most importantly, once they learn how to read they won't have to wait for or trust the state to teach them anything ever again; it's all there for free on the internet and in library books.
crucifiction|11 years ago
fsloth|11 years ago
Could you specify what is horrifying about the previous post? Why would it be more important for a 5 year old to learn to read rather than, say, spend their time building Legos, practice crafts or climbing into trees? Like another poster stated, most kids in Finland do not start to formally learn to read until they are 6 (preschool, if the parents want so) and at the latest when they enter primary school (7). I would claim Finland has a pretty good public primary education system.
Pushing kids to do too much too soon has no advantages, imho. There are skills that are best started acquiring at a youngish age but you will have to convince me pretty hard that reading is one of them. Kids have this natural curiosity to an amazing variety of things. But what those things are can be quite random. The best way to have them learn something is to apply this natural curiosity - i.e. find what they are interested in - and the support them in this activity. This does not mean allowing them play videogames or watch cartoons whole the whole day.
I would say if the kids like it and want to then sure, teach them to read. But before 7, I would claim it is more valuable to find those things that they are really keen into and let them practice those. This creates a positive association to knowledge acquisition (the love of learning). And at that age they soak information and skills like sponges if they are motivated and have the mental capacity to grasp the concepts.
NotOscarWilde|11 years ago
The hypothesis that I think should be tested is whether there is correlation between being a child prodigy in a technical field (in math, physics, computer science or engineering) and getting to read early.
It makes sense theoretically -- if you learn to read by age 8, is there enough time for you to grasp all of high school math and computer science by age 14, like Manjul Bhargava?
While I can imagine my hypothesis being true, that doesn't make it into an argument against later reading age. It just means that for a group of kids this might not the best decision. (And since most of us think of themselves as the "smart kids", maybe that's why a lot of us here are opposed to it.)