Some of the problems related to reading literacy can be resolved by a skilled teacher since only a small proportion of the children underperforming in these areas have special educational needs.
Several studies have provided evidence that the acquisition of basic skills is indispensable for in-depth understanding of the subject matter taught in schools, which is in turn essential for students to be able to apply their knowledge in new contexts rather than just reproduce exactly what they have been taught. If the necessary foundations are not constructed, serious difficulties will arise at later stages of study and the failures suffered during the first years of school will delimit students’ attitudes towards education for the rest of their lives.
Reading plays a special role in learning in the sense that an adequate level of reading skills can be reasonably regarded as a prerequisite to all further learning. In the absence of confident comprehension of written texts, students cannot penetrate deeper levels of mathematics or follow and process science writings.
- The wish to educate the intellect, to cultivate thinking and general cognitive abilities is an ambition that dates back to the beginnings of organised education.
- Another area of educational goals is related to the usability of school knowledge: The dictum “Non scholae sed vitae discimus.” (We do not learn for the school but for life.) is perhaps more topical today than ever before, since our modern social environment is changing far too rapidly for public education to be able to keep pace with it. It is no longer sufficient to teach students to read literature and other types of continuous prose; they must also be able to efficiently process, critically evaluate and use information represented in various forms, such as texts, diagrams and tables. In addition to linearly arranged texts printed on paper, students also need to be able to extract as much information as possible from electronic sources of information.
- The third important issue is the question of which elements of the knowledge accumulated by the sciences and the arts should be selected as contents to be imparted at school. The school system organises the attainable knowledge into a curriculum and a syllabus, and teaching always proceeds via the study of specific contents. While the contents of teaching may serve distant goals reaching beyond the texts themselves, it is far from being immaterial what texts – what contents – are used to develop the skill of meaningful reading.
The above goals have been competing with each other over the past few decades with one or another coming into fashion at different times.
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