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Hello, I was not born in the US, I have never attended a US school, and I have always appreciated math as a source of educating challenges and solutions to practical problems. Schools taught two my made-in-USA kids hate math. I took a look and strongly disliked their math too. Little by little, I found myself on a private quest: first to save my children, then to eradicate math hating in their country. Teaching my third to prevent another disaster, I found many ways to engineer education making the subjects learnable and the students teachable. Most importantly, I think I identified the missing link between school math and children intuition, and I believe I know how to bring it back. Before spending more time and money, I came to r/education to ask for comments and to find allies. This plan failed, but I thought I could be allowed to ask few questions. They are not necessarily related to math, and my children's teachers did not answer them.

20170505 THE TRAP OF READING:

How to save children from falling to where school is pushing them?

If I'm not making mistake, my first American child went to school in 2006. This was when I have met a reading log.

My country of origin—USSR— was believed to be a thoroughly totalitarian contraption, but I could not think of anything nearly so intrusive. Did US schools mean to promote reading? I was ready to believe they did, but what made them think my child's reading belonged to them? All my kids were reading on their own before they entered a school.

I tried to talk to his teacher only to learn that the students who could read were particularly targeted by this mental policing. At that time, I was in the US on a work-related visa, and I did not want any troubles with the authorities. The cause of trouble could be my signature on the report sheet. What was the punishment for underreporting or over-reporting? How was the school going to verify my reports? Reading as such is next to impossible to enforce. Did I have to sit with the child making him read out loud? I could not stomach such listening, and, by the way, reading out loud is a proven way not to remember anything. Or did I have to read all those fine books and interrogate my son?

Few years later, the real trouble raised its head. It turned out that the easiest, if not the only answer to schools' demands, was easy reading literature.

In my past, any reading was thought to be a good habit, although I remember my mom cranking out sarcastic comments about my choice of books, and I knew few grownup compulsive readers whom I loathed.

In this free market economy, my kids were surrounded with the industry of easy reading, standing eager to turn them into the users of its products. In more than one way, schools were helping it to achieve its goal.

Have you heard that children who read have better chance to succeed? While being literally correct, this is the rallying cry to recruit the herds of easy reading addicts to milk. The rest depends on your definition of success.

I have spent much time trying to figure out what to do. Part of the problem was that easy reading was very much the only kind of reading available to young Americans. Teaching my third to read, I ended up writing short stories of my own. My English was substandard, of course, but I was trying to pack at least some substance in a few simple words.

I was helplessly watching familiar symptoms emerging in my third American child: She was swallowing this, enthusiastically reporting the progress to her 1st grade teacher. Then, suddenly, I was told that compulsive reading is good and desirable because it teaches spelling. This makes the problem really interesting.

It has became clear what schools were benefiting from easy reading. If children get hooked, the teachers fulfill their duty without teaching. At no cost to them, but at what cost to the students? How much precious time has to be wasted now and until the end of the children's lives in exchanges for filling up their mental databases and passing the tests?

As long as they are awake, people normally do not have free time. Deciding what to do next, the operating system in my brain always has plenty of much better options than entertainment. There always is much to learn, to improve, to invent or to create. Entertainment is artfully designed to hijack our attention pushing everything else out of its way. Entertainment industry carves out the time for its products offering easier gratification. Easy reading is an informational narcotic. Well, narcotics, toxins and all those nice substances are mostly informational devices.

I am not asking if spelling is still needed. After all, it's not my language. I suspect, however, that elementary school teachers and the ladies stuffing my child's mind with the cat stew are not relying on their spelling skills.

The trouble is, kids better keep their heads free. Every cat book is a wave of compulsive learning. It washes away the previous book, not sparing any other knowledge. How much do we remember from what you learned? How can kids remember the useful knowledge long enough to let it settle down and form the links? Diverse cross-linked knowledge is what education must be about.