Letter: Don’t Ask Children to Read and Write Before They Can Talk

By Sue Palmer

Sir: Janet Street-Porter (‘Why do we neglect the young?’, 10 November) has fallen headlong into the same trap as the erstwhile National Literacy Strategy in believing that the sooner children are started on reading and writing the more likely they are to succeed in school. As an independent literacy specialist, I worked for several years for the NLS (including writing their grammar training course for teachers) before realising that our very early emphasis on formal skills was actually causing many children’s problems, not solving them.

A visit to Finland, the country which consistently tops the international literacy league, convinced me. There the education of three- to seven- year-old schoolchildren focuses on the structured development of spoken language and listening, along with attention and social skills. When formal teaching of the three Rs begins, at the age of seven, Finnish children learn to read and write easily and quickly.

In contemporary Britain, children increasingly arrive in nursery or primary school with poorly developed speech, burgeoning attention deficit and non-existent social skills. Many have had few life experiences beyond watching TV, and there’s much groundwork to be done before they’ll be able to read books or wield pencils. Yet we now start them on these activities at the age of four ” Ms Street- Porter seems to want them to start at three.

I agree heartily that improving literacy standards is one of the most important social projects of our age. But starting sooner is not the way to do it. Early years education should be about laying sound foundations for literacy, not about asking children to read and write before they can talk.

SUE PALMER

TRURO, CORNWALL