Loud mouth, you missed what I said. I said that kids need to be given the tools to learn how to question.

That year one child could not use the computer to Google and use Power Point, unless they have learnt to read first.

That is not indoctrination.

Yes, some learn to read easy. Others find it hard. That goers for maths and other skills that one needs to be a functioning adult in our society.

"Our natural environment is in ruinous or near-ruinous condition."

Typical of the green groupthink that the author promotes.

I really think that Kellie is less concerned about making education << an ideology free-zone>> than she is by/with the possibility that any changes may impinge on what she and like thinkers have long considered their exclusive domain.

The humanities faculties at most of our universities have long been dominated by one-eyed left-wing ideologues

Flo,

With respect, I think you missed what I said too. Of course, ultimately, children need to be provided with the tools to think and reason and learn meaningfully, but as any teacher knows, there are many children who don't know what they are there for, who don't understand what reading is and who need a lot of attention to bring them around to grasp what the letters and words mean, and to see the value in reading.

Of course, the goal is to get kids to the level from which they can enjoy reading for meaning and understanding the world around them, but even so, they will still need to grasp the basics of reading, from basic words which have some 'oomph' - I don't mean small words per se, like 'a' and 'the', but punchy words like 'kiss' and 'jump' and even (as Sylvia Ashton-Warner noted) 'helicopter', 'crocodile', 'punch', words which do have expressive meaning for kids.

I was lucky, perhaps you were too: when I was eight, an encyclopedia salesman came around and offered my mum a set of Richard's Topical Encyclopedias on time-payment. She took them and never saw him again. I suppose we still owe a hundred pounds for them. But in a house before TV, they were gold-mines and I would go through the fifteen volumes every day, with pictures and short articles. So certainly reading for meaning, yes indeed.

But so many children have not a single book in the house. I lived for some time in an Aboriginal community and I don't think anybody had a single book in their house. Reading was off their radar. That wasn't how people learnt anything, although you and I would say, of course it should be. But that's how it was.

No child should be left behind and the task for early-primary teachers is to ensure that every child is firmly on the path to learning for meaning, reading for meaning - but that isn't a one-leap process. For many kids, it is a painful and baffling process to get to that stage.

Joe
www.firstsources.info