A couple of weeks ago, for two days, I taught a kindergarten class. I love doing this; there’s nothing quite like these mighty moppets, fast and low to the ground, many missing teeth, all of them just waiting to see what a substitute teacher would be like.
But also, I love the opportunity to marvel at the fact that in four or five short years these kids have learned to do so many things. I am most impressed with speech development. How is it possible, I wonder, for communication skills to develop so magnificently in so short a time?
To answer my own question, no one taught them to speak; they learned it by immersion — by listening and imitating sounds, and learning to recognize intonation, facial expression and rhythm of speech.
I had two years of Spanish in high school and two years of French in college ; yet, if I were to order from a menu in either of those languages, I would be fortunate not to be served a bicycle tire. But because I lived in downtown Würzburg, Germany for 18 months, I became relatively fluent in German. I was immersed in it.
Our children enter school with an astonishing vocabulary of some 5,000 words. This being so, parents may wonder whether the same could be true of reading. This is because, by and large, we teach reading; we don’t immerse them in it.
But reading can begin at home. I was lucky to have grown up with books. The living room shelves were full of them, and they were treated as loving friends. They were to be shared, and I was invited into this world. I entered it willingly and full of curiosity; and as I was read to every night with the book held so I could follow along, those hieroglyphics gradually became words.
But for far too many kids, this magical world is not opened to them until they enter school. It is interesting to note that if we taught children to speak the way we teach them to read, some would be unable to communicate verbally as, say, adolescents uttering indistinguishable jungle noises. Indeed, some might conceivably be mute.
Children have, for the most part, the curiosity and sense of adventure to enter this fascinating realm far earlier than we customarily permit them to do so. But, begun at home in so many instances. Once jump-started, we can stand back and let them explore and discover — and just read.
Unlike driving a car or learning brain surgery, reading is fail-safe. We cannot, of course, tell a beginning driver to just drive, or a fledgling medical student to “just cut,” but in reading we learn from our mistakes without such unfortunate consequences as totaling a car or killing a patient.
Of course, there’s more to it than this. But it all begins with that first introduction to books — something all parents can do.
But let me be clear: Academic education is not a race with a clearly defined finish line. The child who learns to read at age 4 has not “won” over a child who learns at 7. And I am not suggesting that we all raise super kids by forcing preschoolers to read. The chances are good that if we expose kids to books at an early age, it will “take,” but we must not beat ourselves up if it does not. They will learn when they are ready.
I undertook the care some years ago of a 15-year-old boy, a non-reader who had endured 10 years of being pushed, cajoled, begged and bullied to read.
“Please lay off,” I implored his teachers. “Let him have some time free of the pressure to read.”
After a semester of this freedom, he came to me one day and said, “I want to learn to read now. I’m ready.” And he learned to read in a phenomenally short time.
So if your preschool child resists reading, don’t despair. Buy those books, leave them lying around, at the ready. You never know.
Robin C. Harris, an 18-year resident of Lake County, is the author of “Journeys out of Darkness, Adventures in Foster Care.” A retired educator, he is a substitute teacher for Lake County schools and has recently completed two works of fiction for children and teens. He is available for tutoring in first through eighth grades. Harris can be contacted at harris.tke@att.net.
