We have Rue Kream’s book floating around the house and though I’ve read it cover to cover several times I always seem to find little nuggets of “Oooooh!!!” when I pick it up. This is the one I read last night. Lately I’ve felt inundated with people testing their kids and diagnosing kids and finding things “wrong” with their kids when for the most part, it’s just not that child’s time yet. It’s been bothering me more and more and it’s one of those things that get under my skin. I find I have to immerse myself in reading things from other radical unschoolers when it gets like this since there’s none IRL to talk with to work through those feelings of ick.
And then I picked up the book and just opened it and found this (page 129, Parenting a Free Child; emphasis mine):
The idea that all children should be able to read by a certain age is one of the things that causes the most problems for children in school. Pushing reading onto a child before she is ready and interested is of no benefit to her and, in fact, can be very detrimental. Why then is the idea that it is necessary so pervasive?
For one thing, our society places a huge importance on reading. Not many activities are considered as valuable, much to the disservice of people more interested in mechanics or art or any number of other things. Secondly, a classroom full of children who know how to read is much easier for a teacher to manage than a classroom in which some know how and some don’t.
Just as families’ lives are scheduled around what is convenient for the school system rather than what is best for the family, the idea that childrne’t must learn to read by a certain age has much more to do with the school’s operation than it does with what is actually in the best interest of the children. This system of education has led to childrne’s being labeled and drugged when they do not learn to read at the age that schools’ administrators feel is ideal. It has led to children who feel shame and frustration instead of excitement at learning something new.
Unschooled children show every day that, given a nurturing environment with someone available to answer questions and read stories as well as to provide interesting things to read and to look at, each child WILL come to reading in her own time.
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