Interactive World Corp. Educational Director

Reading, as "the beginning of real intellectual development," is simply "the most important single skill a child will learn during his [or her] entire school career," notes the author (F. Blumenfeld) of a book on the teaching of reading skills. He goes on to warn both teachers and parents that "if a child is not taught to read properly, his [or her] entire intellectual development will be handicapped" (1973, p. 1) since "reading extends our imaginations, our emotions, and our minds through the discovery and exploration of unknown worlds" (B. Bettleheim & K. Zelen ,1982). In purely economic terms and job satisfaction terms, those students whose reading skills fail to meet the higher literacy standards of the new millennium will find themselves playing progressively lesser roles in the professions while working harder for less money than their more literate associates.

So, should we parents of the new millennium "be [doing something] about [our] child’s education" when "there’s an 85 percent chance," according to long-time national reading specialist Rudolph Flesch, the author of two indicting criticisms ("Why Johnny can’t read," that appeared in 1955, and "Why Johnny still can’t read," appearing 26 years later in 1981) on how poor reading skills have been persistently taught in American schools, "that [our] Johnny or Mary will never learn to read properly? (p. 1)"

The kind of "smarter parenting" that guides and empowers our children in their acquisition and mastery of the essential skills (foremost among which is reading) for school and life success is termed "parenting for high potential" (as coined and used by the National Association for Gifted Children), and it’s more imperative now than ever that we get actively involved in guiding our children’s education for two very fundamental additional reasons, apart from the one just noted. First, there’s the "escalating need" that "today’s technological world [seems to expand] for literate, critical thinkers who can fully participate in society" (J. D. Cooper, Literacy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997, p.5). Second, there’s the pressure now being exerted on the teachers and students in Florida schools to comply with the Board of Education’s mandated "return to high standards," which "aren’t minimal-skills standards but high-stakes standards that students must possess [as] skills and knowledge not only to survive but thrive in the world beyond high school" (S. Koon, Interactive Teacher [1998] 2:2, p. 43).

In proceeding to guide and empower our children to be the best readers and most literate participants in our fast-paced, technology-based Information Age society, we need to apply the same principles and beliefs so that we aren’t advocating that which we parents and our homes are not.

First, create a home environment conducive to reading and writing while representing literate role models to our children. In wanting our children to reach their highest literacy potential, we must create and maintain environments that exemplify and promote our literacy values and beliefs while being willing to create and expand on every opportunity for literacy interaction. On one memorable occasion, when I was pushing a writing deadline and had no personal time to spare, so I thought, my highly literate, reading-teacher wife handed me my teenage son’s copy of John Grisham’s The Firm, saying : "Here, read this novel as soon as you can, as our son just finished it and thinks it’s the best book he’s ever read. He wants to sit down and chat with you about it, but only after you’ve read it from cover to cover." I got that it wasn’t a request but an order and made the time, not only reading the whole book within the next 24 hours but going and consulting the reviews, so we could additionally discuss and share how the reviewers had perceived it and whether their views agreed with ours. Later, we had another memorable father-son literary chat after seeing and comparing the movie version with the original novel, soon extending that conversation to comparing each of the Tennessee Williams screen plays (all of which had been produced on film and were available at our local video rental store) with the original play script. In still another family literacy opportunity, a close family friend of ours died suddenly, leaving our children to question the matter of death and whether there were some divine plan involved, so we then read Thornton Wilder’s prize-winning novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and discussed the efficacy of the priest’s conclusion after probing into the life of each victim up to moment of the bridge’s fateful collapse.

Second, learn all we can about intelligence, learning and educational technology with a view toward providing our children with a more enlightened guidance in their pursuit of literacy. It makes perfect sense to say that "smarter parenting" is the product of better-informed parents, recognizing that there’s been a real explosion of new knowledge and exciting discoveries and breakthroughs with respect to human intelligence and the characteristics and measures of intelligence, in newly perceiving disabilities (such as dyslexia) as gifts rather than handicaps, studies of left/right brain dominance and the processing of information and the learning of multiple languages, learning styles and modalities, multiple types of intelligence, taxonomies of higher-level thinking, and new methods for developing critical thinking skills. Thus, better-informed parents know, for example, that every child has a particular learning style which, if accounted for and accommodated, "can result in improved attitudes toward learning and an increase in productivity, academic achievement, and creativity" (ERIC printout on learning styles, 1998). Smarter parenting for the higher reading potential of one’s children will, therefore, teach to their strengths and accommodate their interests, knowing "how to select, adapt, and manage the best reading methods for different learners, [for] there is no single best way to teach every youngster to read"; and, when we teach to each reader’s preferred style, we "accelerate literacy levels so that [our children] learn to love reading and become lifelong readers" (M. Carbo, "Reading styles times twenty," Educational Leadership, Mar. 1997, pp. 38-39).

In all our parenting activity for our children’s highest-reading potential, it matters little in the beginning if the child is reading at, beyond, or below grade level or exhibiting (or not) any of the signs of a reading skills problem (such as reading without expression, reading through sentences, reading in a halting or choppy fashion, or not getting at least 80 percent of the answers correct on one’s reading comprehension tests). What matters most in starting with our children a home-based, reading-for-highest-potential program is not where each child is right now but where the commitment of the parent is and where each child is going to finish with respect to his or her highest potential. Let us also not forget that every child can learn and every parent can guide his or her child’s learning, irrespective of how English literate the parent may himself or herself be, for parental commitment to and involvement in parenting smarter are more important virtues than actual parental literacy or literate abilities.