How to Make Sure Your Child Doesn't Read

Did you know that in the early days of the founding of our country, that children weren't sent to school until they learned to read?  Where did they learn that?  At home, of course!  So you can see, that homeschooling is the natural way to educate.    Reading wasn't taught by experts, but by parents, because learning to read isn't hard unless you make it so.  The Founding generation was highly literate!

Children of at least average intelligence can learn to read if proper methods are used.  It only makes sense to use phonics, since English is a phonetic language.  Each letter or combination of letters corresponds to one of only forty-four sounds in English.  

For two or three decades now, schools have been passing kids along who cannot read, and since most are NOT homeschooled, who is at fault here? It is the most basic job of schools to teach children to read!  The reason so many cannot read (and as a result, they hate to read, understandably) is because they use faulty methods, which go by a variety of names.  

They might ask kids to use strategies, such as looking at pictures or noticing the first letter or two of a word or the shape of the word or to learn a gazillion sight words.  What a difficult way to read!  Reading is NOT a guessing game.  There are sounds and orderly rules.  Even the exceptions are the exception.

Throwing in a smattering of phonics into the mix is not helpful and only leads to confusion.  Even worse, it hinders their ability to read.  Only phonics must be used.  A couple of good programs are Spalding and the Orton Gillingham systems.  Orton Gillingham also claims to help dyslexic kids.  There is abundant research backing up phonics as the most effective way to teach reading.  If you would like to learn more about how the decline in reading has happened and what can be done, I suggest listening to every episode of the podcast, "Sold a Story."  

In the first three years (K-3rd grade) kids are taught to read, ostensibly, and after that they are expected to read to learn.  If they didn't learn to read by then, they will have an incredibly difficult time learning in school.  (Fortunately, you are a homeschooler and don't have to allow that to happen to your children.)  

Nine out of ten high school dropouts were struggling readers in third grade. Students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school. This will alter their career trajectory profoundly. High school dropouts are already not eligible for 90 percent of jobs and cost the economy an estimated $272,000 over their lifetime. (Read the full report from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions)

I find it very inappropriate that more school districts want to monitor homeschoolers when their own track record in this area is abominable.  Furthermore, the fact that reading scores and reading ability in government schools is in the tank, is educational malpractice.  Yet, they continue to graduate high schoolers who cannot read!

​Here is their own report showing that fewer than a third of the (4th and 8th grade) children are proficient readers.   And it continues to decline! What they don't adress is why.  So I am asking, "Why don't they explain the methods they are using?  Why don't they use effective methods?  They exist.  These are questions that demand answers.

All other learning hinges on reading, so make this your educational priority.

Aren't you glad you homeschool?