The Importance of Proper Literacy Development in Schools

I think we've come to accept poverty as an excuse and I'm not denying that poverty doesn't play a role but kids from poor families can learn to read. Even people who are pretty good readers if they were taught more about how their written language works early on they'd probably be better readers and they'd be better spellers. There's such close links between spelling and reading that if you have terrible spelling it probably means that you weren't taught to read that well because you'd probably be a better speller. We just haven't been doing a good job writ large helping children understand how Written Language works, he says.