Thought provoking essay by E.D. Hirsch Jr. in the Washington Post, the Knowledge Connection. He also has a web site. Politics aside on Why No Child Left Behind has not lived up to it's expectations, the essay talks about the importance of giving children more exposure to different materials helps them in school.

My belief is reading is a great way to expose children to more vocabulary and concepts through books, especially ones they may not get in school. School is so limited in the time they have with a child, so reading is often left to be done at home. Of course with competition from TV and video games, it's a challenge to bring up a young reader. One tactic is unplug the TV, to force the child to not watch TV. I am lucky that where I live, we have poor TV reception and we don't have cable (the horror according to my daughter). This enabled my wife and I to better control what my daughter watched on TV growing up, such as DVD's, or then it was also Video's. Another great way to help reading is by subscribing to a newspaper. I also believe in starting very young reading to children, to get them used to the concept and expose them to new ideas.

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