Read to Me, Please! Why Parents Must Read to Their Children.
Over the last couple of years, I have developed a strong interest in investigating why some children are readers and others are not. My interest arose after marking a particularly appalling set of exam papers for Grade 8 (12-13 year olds) in February of 2010. All but a few managed to write an essay that had a beginning, middle and end, that used paragraphs and that contained a well-narrated, interesting storyline. I started reading widely on the subject and also asked the pupils themselves what they had read as children and what their parents had read to them. I was shocked to find that more than half could not remember anyone reading to them at all. I was also shocked to find out how many of them had televisions and/or playstations in their rooms. I came to the conclusion that, though I was teaching at a private school, many of the pupls had actually suffered some degree of emotional neglect: some hardly saw their parents at ...