ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the importance of consistency and method in teaching and raises the question of how many of children's other problems are actually created by confusing communications from teachers. Education, based on the fundamental processes of learning to read and write, has two main requirements: an understanding of the process of teaching and an understanding of the student. The teacher needs to know about how children in general at a particular stage or age-range tend to think and learn, but more importantly the teacher needs to be able to empathise with and understand the individual child's world view. In the case of the teaching of reading, "The Emperor's New Clothes" corresponds to the universal belief that we know how children are taught to read and that good teachers in schools all over the country are busy doing it.
