So apparently reading comprehension or just being able to read isn’t natural and it isn’t so good in the U.S. This article goes far in explaining why that’s the case.

The article makes mention that there’s active and passive resistance to changing the way we teach kids to read. I’ve seen evidence of that in my own travels. One was doing Program Reviews at local schools in RI. I think I’ve told of the one class where they were learning Microsoft Office and that particular day were using Excel and the teacher had handed out crib sheets for the tax lookup.

At this point I asked if the teacher was going to cover formulas in cells, or even dare I mention Visual BASIC for Applications. What that teacher replied with sticks in my craw even today. She said and I paraphrase “Oh, that’s computer programming and you need advanced math for that.” {sigh} Let me tell you I was not charitable in the report I wrote for that classroom. I explained basic number systems like base 2, base 8, base 10, and base 16 and perhaps Algebra I were all that was necessary.

That very attitude of the teacher explains why we have only about 1/3 of students at proficiency.