After making a comment in วิธีสอนการอ่านที่ถูกต้องแก่เยาวชน by ชยันต์ เพชรศรีจันทร์ < https://www.gotoknow.org/posts/580485>. I thought I had not made my point clear. So here is my view.


1) Reading is an important life skill taught over many years (in school) because knowledge has been recorded (in letters) for many thousands years. [Reading (books) is not needed in societies where knowledge is passed on by other means such as oral recites, audio-visual media and 'hand-on' practices.] Though currently multimedia have gained popularity, reading, writing and books will be the main stream of knowledge transfer for a long time.


2) I think, we are looking for 'best methods' to teach children to read correctly, to comprehend what they read, and to love reading often. So the emphasis is on the teachers and methods of teaching. Teachers have onus (responsibility) to teach children in the right method(s) and to teach children to read 'right' (to pronounce right, to be able to analyse what they read grammatically and understand the meaning of what they read, Otherwise they cannot infer knowledge from what they read.) It is this point that I think we should be clear before we embark on finding 'right' teaching methods. Children can benefit greatly from learn to read right. They should be encouraged to explore reading right and see/gain the benefits for themselves.


3) Because reading right cannot be learned in a short time, we need a continuing program/campaign to teach this skill to children. The teaching methods then need to be staged and continued consistently over a number years (and over schools so that children movements won't greatky impact their learning. That is right teaching to read right should be a national program.)


4) Enjoyment from reading can be enhanced by 'right writing'. Without right writing for children at appropriate skill levels, the right teaching would still struggle hard and children would be discouraged - thus the 'teach-right for children to read-right' would be doomed eventually and the children would be left waiting for another reform!

5) Reading is a life-long-learning skill. Reading foreign languages right can be very beneficial too. Reading 'patterns', 'signs', (dynamic) 'processes' and machine interface icons and languages can make life easier too.

Reading is now elevated from pronunciation (making right sounds for words) to inferencing (making right interpretation for symbols -- even mathematical symbols and patterns) to understanding of representations -- like learning what data says or researching. But This is where I stop ;-)