Teaching Kids to Read and Write

For three years I was an International Baccalaureate, or IB, student. The students accepted in this program are typically very high achievers, and the program itself imposes very high standards. This year I decided to leave IB, and so have been able to observe the difference between a regular academic setting with that of an IB classroom. Last year in IB English, we studied world literature and focused mainly on analytical skills; it was assumed, and fairly accurately, that the previous two years of the program would have made us into decent readers and writers. This year in academic English, we have already had more lessons regarding common technical errors than we had in total in IB last year. Sadly enough, it appeared that these lessons were necessary.

But it is not only secondary education that is failing to teach basic reading and writing in an effective manner, in fact, this responsibility largely belongs to elementary schools. I babysat two girls this summer, a six year old and a nine year old, and part of my responsibility was to make them practice their writing, one handwritten page each per day. Through them, I witnessed not only extremely substandard writing levels, but also a dislike of writing. They argued with me every day for half an hour before I could get them to write anything. They were also much more interested in watching movies than having me read to them. This leads me to believe that elementary schools instil neither a love of language, nor proper reading and writing skill.

It appears that reading and writing are being taught poorly in public schools. Personally, I find this phenomenon disheartening, especially when we consider that written language is one of the early marks of more advanced civilizations. Are we going backwards?