The following are the key insights into development of reading among children:1. Reading is a composite skill and at the broadest level it is composed of character recognition (or the graphic) skill and character to sound translation (phonological) skills. A good command over the two makes for good reading skills.2. A child can be trained […]

There’s bad news for parents – schools have only a secondary role in cultivating reading skills among children. Homes, role-modeled by parents, are the primary spaces for developing higher level reading skills. Reading is a highly intensive, non-reflexive, time-consuming and collegial activity, not suitable for competitive, time-tabled schools.Happily, nonetheless, schools remain the prime planner, assessor […]

Learning to read lies outside the original (i.e. genetic, by birth) repertoire of the human brain’s functions and requires a whole new ‘circuit’ to be build afresh for every child.Unlike vision or spoken language, there is no genetic blueprint for reading (literally and physiologically) and the brain changes itself to suit each individual reader’s medium […]

Few ever bother to look at the comparative advantages of the four vehicles of learning – doing, seeing, hearing and reading. There is little appreciation of reading as the primary mode of learning.Incidentally, in a proud moment for India, and a great mark of insight, for the first time ever an Indian Prime Minister, addressing […]

Have you ever heard the expression “use it or lose it”? It is true! If you do not use your body, you will surely lose it, your muscles will become flabby and weak, your heart and lungs won’t function efficiently, your joints will become stiff and easily injured. Inactivity is as much a health risk […]

Surprising as it may sound, reading is the most extensive as well as intensive thinking process known to humans, far more than brainstorming sessions on a topic or the toughest intellectual problem-solving.Reading requires the automatic integration of several ‘deep-thinking’ processes. Here is a sample of such processes to the extent we could list (neuroscientists can […]

Reading is an acquired skill – we have to learn to read. The earliest record of written language (an organised system of symbols) is somewhere around 4000 BC. And as a skill for the masses, it is only a few centuries old. The invention of the printing press in the middle of the last millennium […]