As you prepare to get back into the full swing of the school year, I want to encourage you to read a book written over 20 years ago by a renowned child psychologist, Bruno Bettelheim, and his co-author, Karen Zelan. The book, On Learning to Read, The Child's Fascination with Meaning, may be the most important book you could read about education.

According to these authors, children learn to read not just to gain a skill; they read for meaning. When children have trouble learning to read, we often assume that they are not being taught the correct system for reading. Would straight phonics be better? Or would sight reading be a better system? Bettelheim makes the case that the problem may lie more in what we are trying to get them to read. Our children are smart. They want the depth of meaning that's found in good literature, not the meaningless drivel that's found in reading primers.

Every child should love to read.  This insightful book opens the door to understanding the entire reading process.