- by Glenn Doman There was a strong temptation to call this column "Something Awful Is Going to Happen" since it will begin the discussion of the dire predictions concerning what will happen to youngsters who read too soon. This column will deal with the myths about babies and learning. | 
Glenn Doman
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Myth #1: Children who read too soon will have learning problems.
We have been teaching little children to read for 49 years. We have yet to know or hear about a single child who has a learning problem as a result of knowing how to read. Being able to read with great enjoyment at three won't keep a tiny kid from tripping and cutting his lip but it will prevent him from being part of the 35% of our children who fail to learn to read in first grade.
The problem for children in school is not learning too soon but instead learning too late. In school a first grader learns too little, too late all. That is why so many of our children fail to learn to read at all in first grade and some of them will never read at grade level – too little too late.
Myth #2: The child who reads too early will have a reading problem.
In half a century of teaching well babies and helping very young brain-injured children learn how to read it is clear that having the ability to read is not a problem but rather a solution. We have never seen a child harmed by learning to read. If teaching a child were harmful shouldn’t we have hundreds of letters from mothers telling us about it? We haven't. We do have thousands of letters from all over the world telling about the great joy and pleasure mother and the baby had in learning together.
Children who can read don't have reading problems. Children who can't read have reading problems.
Myth #3: Children who read too early will become nasty little geniuses.
The fact: Come, come, mythmakers, let's get together. Are the early readers going to be dunces or geniuses? It's surprising really how many people woefully predict Myth #1 and also Myth #3. The fact is that neither is true. We know thousands of early readers and where we have seen early readers we have seen happy, well-adjusted kids who had more to enjoy than other children. We do not hold that early reading will solve all the problems that might beset a child and we suppose that if you looked far enough you might find a child who was an early reader and who for other reasons also happened to be a nasty kid.
In our experience you would have to look a great deal farther for such a child among early readers than you would among those who learned to read in school. The child who is taught to read in school has a thirty percent chance of not learning to read at all. We are quite confident you would find a great many unhappy, badly adjusted children among the late readers and the non-readers. They are all too common.
Myth #4: The child who learns to read too early will miss phonetics.
The fact: He may miss phonetics but if he does he won't miss it.
Phonetic is defined as: "Of or pertaining to speech sounds, their production, or transcription into written symbols."
Dr. O.K. Moore, a true pioneer in teaching three-year-olds to read, refused to be drawn into the silly struggle between the "phonetics" school and the "look-say" school of teaching reading, which he terms a sterile fight.
You might well ask yourself, "Did I teach my baby to hear language by the phonetics method or did I simply talk to him?" You might also ask, "How well did he do?" If he learned to hear and speak language fairly well, maybe the system you used was a pretty good system.
The idea that learning to understand spoken language through the ear is a brain function (which, of course, it is), but that learning to read language through the eye is a school subject, is sheer nonsense. Both are brain functions.
All well tiny kids learn to hear and speak their native tongue by hearing it spoken as babies and as a result go to school understanding speech.
Tiny kids who are not shown written language as babies do not learn to see language until they go to school and as a result learn to read slowly (or not at all).
Tiny kids who are shown written language go to school reading, and reading very well indeed. They do not learn to read phonetically any more than they learn to hear phonetically but they are first-rate phoneticians. All kids are linguistic geniuses.
Yes it's true, your child will miss phonetics if you teach him to read when he's tiny - and won't that be nice?
Myth #5: The child who learns to read too early will be bored in first grade.
The fact: Yes, there is no question that he'll be bored in school. Just like almost every other kid in the first grade.
Did the reader ever live through days half as long as those he spent in first grade? Ask any first grader how long a school day is compared with Saturday and Sunday. Does his answer mean that he doesn't want to learn? Not at all. Five-year-olds carry on highly sophisticated conversations and the story is told about two kindergarteners at recess who were deciding that the 707 which had just flown overhead could not have been supersonic when the bell rang. "Let's get back and string those damned beads," said Michael to Josh.
When a bright seven-year-old has to read "See the bright new automobile", can we blame him for being bored? He can not only see it. He can tell you the name, manufacturer, year, body type and maybe the horsepower. If there is anything else you want to know about the bright new automobile just ask him. Unless you're up on cars, just ask him - he probably knows more about it than you do.
Kids will go right on being bored in school until we give them material worthy of their interest.
To assume that the child who knows the most will be the most bored is to assume that the child who knows the least will be the most interested and therefore the least bored.
If school is interesting, only the ones who are not able to understand will be bored.
Do you remember grammar school? If so you probably remember precisely what I remember.
I went to school expecting to have a great time there.
When I arrived, some old hag who it seemed to me was a hundred years old and who knew that I didn't want to learn and would have to be beaten into learning anything said to me, "You Buster, sit down there, look at me, shut up and think what I'm thinking."
To my astonishment she was able to make me sit where she wanted me to sit, look where she wanted me to look, and shut up. Fortunately, for my sanity and for my learning she was not able to make me think what she was thinking.
For the next thousand or 50 years, while she droned on endlessly I heard almost nothing that she said. While she and the others who followed her went on and on, I climbed Mt. Everest long before that guy from New Zealand and explored the oceans deeper than Cousteau had been.
I found school to be endless years of boredom, interrupted by seconds of sheer terror. Here I'd be in the middle of the Sahara Desert, just me, my trusty rifle and my camel, looking at the Sphinx. While I stood staring at the Sphinx in astonishment and pleasure I would slowly become aware that someone was saying "Glenn." It wasn't the Sphinx talking, it wasn't the camel and it wasn't me. My delight in having found the Sphinx turned to sheer terror.
It wasn't that I didn't know the answer the teacher had asked of me, it was that I didn't know the question.
Sound familiar?
Mark Twain said that he had never allowed his schooling to interfere with his learning.
I tried not to either.
Didn't you?
Will your tiny kid be bored in school if he learns to read before he goes? He will if he has any sense. The question is who is best able to protect himself from the problems presented by boredom? The brightest kid or the dullest?
by Glenn Doman,
Founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential
