Age to teach reading

[ElizaG]

"Has since seen"? I find that hard to believe, considering that many countries have extremely high literacy rates.

http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/winter11/literacy.cfm

": while male literacy in New England rose from 60 percent in the late seventeenth century to 90 percent by the early days of the Republic, he estimated female literacy in the same period as rising from 31 percent to 48 percent—roughly half the rate of males."

There are, in the world today, countries where women have a close to 100% literacy rate. So the red does not make sense.

 

 

The founding fathers were certainly highly educated people, but I do not believe their educational level was characteristic for the vast majority of the population.

I haven't looked into this in depth, but the way I've seen it described is that the United States used to have an exceptionally high proportion of the population with a very high level of literacy (i.e., far above the modern critera that are used for determining literacy rates).  

 

For instance, from John Taylor Gatto, "Looking Behind Appearances":

 

"By 1812, Pierre DuPont was claiming that barely four in a thousand Americans were unable to read well and that the young had skill in argumentation thanks to daily debates at the common breakfast table. By 1820, there was even more evidence of Americans’ avid reading habits, when 5 million copies of James Fenimore Cooper’s complex and allusive novels were sold, along with an equal number of Noah Webster’s didactic Speller—to a population of dirt farmers under 20 million in size.

 

In 1835, Richard Cobden announced there was six times as much newspaper reading in the United States as in England, and the census figures of 1840 gave fairly exact evidence that a sensational reading revolution had taken place without any exhortation on the part of public moralists and social workers, but because common people had the initiative and freedom to learn."

[lea_lpz]

I must say I had my eldest go to Waldorf at a young age (PreK-4th) before I started homeschooling and they didn't force the kids to read until 3rd grade. At first I was confused and almost disappointed (wanting to make sure my child wasn't "missing out") but it was truly incredible to see how excited and READY all the children were when they hit 3rd grade. I can honestly say it was surprising and a tremendous success. My advice - Definitely wait until your children are ready. They will not be behind but energized and excited to dive in for years to come!

I have often wondered if I should have waited to begin basic phonics and handwriting until my kids were 7.