You're absolutely right.
Children learn to do things they want to do. If they don't see value in reading, they won't put the effort in. After all, learning to read is hard work.
About 20 years ago, about the time my kids were born, on a whim I bought the set of McGuffey's readers. Boy, was it an eye opener. Children 100 years ago were FAR more advanced in their reading than children today, even with all our sophisticated education departments and PhDs and all. My wife brings home her reading series to do planning with, I compare it with McGuffey, and it's sad how limiting the language the modern series uses is, how banal the readings are, and how litte actual reading the children are expected to do.
My wife does, I believe, an excellent job with the children she is given to work with, but when you have children over half of whom are from broken homes, a large number of whom have TVs in their own rooms, and all of whom watch TV in the evening instead of reading with or being read to by their parents, there's not a lot she can do.
I know it's easy to blame TV for everything wrong with society, but in this case, TV really is a significant culprit. |
