Copyright (c) 2010 Stephen Lau

The United States is the most affluent and technologically advanced of all the industrial nations on earth. With its "free" compulsory education for all, a network of state-owned and state-operated teachers' training colleges, strict teacher certification requirements, and rich resources dedicated to education, the appalling illiteracy rate of the country is a disgrace to educators.

However, one cannot ascribe the illiteracy or the general poor reading skill of children in this country entirely to the inefficiency of the education system; parents are as much to blame as teachers in not efficiently teaching children to read.

Teaching children to read should be the foremost responsibility of parents. Sometimes you cannot blame the parents, because they themselves may be poor readers to begin with—it is something like the blind leading the blind.

Even if parents are educated, they may not want to spend quality time with their children. In addition, many people may erroneously believe that in this day and age, information can be readily obtained from the visual media, such as the television, so there is little need to turn to the written word, and hence the general indifference to developing reading skill in young children.

Reading should always begin at home, and parents should be the first teachers to their children.

Ideally, teaching children to read should be the joint efforts of both parents and teachers. It has always been a wrong presumption that teachers alone should do the teaching of reading and that teaching should be conducted only at school. Contrary to popular belief, educational researchers have found that important aspects of intellectual behavior are often acquired at home rather than in school.

Parenthood is not just a moment; it is an ongoing process. It would be wrong for parents to assume that they could ease their responsibility of teaching once their children attend school. At best, the nursery or kindergarten should be an adjunct to, not a substitute for, the home and the role of parents.

Since parents teach their children to talk, it is only natural that they should teach them to read as well. If parents think they should educate their children, they should shoulder the responsibility of teaching their children to read. To teach a child to read and write is the greatest gift and enjoyment of any parent.

Parents, who are interested in their children's intellectual development and who are responsive to their interest in printed language, can teach basic reading skills. They not only can but also must if they want their children to become early and proficient readers. Children are born learners; and parents are natural teachers and main educators of their children in reading and writing in their early years.

Parents do not need a course in reading instruction before they can effectively teach reading and writing.

Parents often have advantages over their teachers. They understand much better the temperamental climate of their own children—their interests in certain activities and their readiness to learn. In addition, they can provide consistently daily reinforcement in developing their reading skills—something that may not be possible at school. Furthermore, they can afford the one-on-one relation with them, which is virtually impossible in the classroom. Finally, they can create a learning environment that makes learning easy and possible, since parents already provide for them all of their basic daily needs.

To conclude, parents can and must teach their children to read if they want them to be successful academically.