ABSTRACT
The ability to read is essential in any part of the curriculum. Learning how to read has been a traditional part of the curriculum of the early years, and then discarded, as if, once the ability to decode messages fluently had been acquired, it was no longer a matter of importance. This policy has two damaging consequences. The first is that the ‘skill’ of reading (like mathematics) is depicted as something for its own sake, almost without a purpose beyond itself. The only point of reading, as a skill, is the consequence of being able to use it. This book concentrates on how difficulties can be overcome, but always stresses that the skill is not an end in itself, but something necessary for the whole of the curriculum, a fact we must not ignore.
