The History of Teaching Reading is not Very Old

What people in American don’t seem to realize is this country was made by homeschooling. It was one of the few times in America when most children could read and write and they were taught in covered wagons trekking into the wilderness. I can still remember one of the early TV programs ‘Little House On The Prairie’ where the kids had to learn their reading and writing. It was actually a theme that ran through the whole program.Schools have been around for a long time but they were mainly for the wealthy and elites of society. In the history of teaching reading there was a very big step about 100 years ago when Maria Montessori started teaching learning and mentally disabled children in Italy.She brought out the system of learning phonics with sandpaper letters and her disabled kids were learning to read faster than the children in the village school. But as Maria was not politically motivated her system never took off in mainstream schools.Mainstream schools usually switch between phonics and whole word or whole language system, depending on which political force is in play at the moment.The main problem with reading is a lot of students will learn to read no matter what system is in place but it has been shown that phonics helps children who are struggling to learn reading. Success in learning to read depends more on the enthusiasm, ability and energy of the teachers and children than on any particular teaching method.But that has not stopped politics getting involved with how to teach reading. The history of teaching reading in basically a history of how politics influences schools. And if the government is paying the schools then they have the clout.