Should kids be taught to read to a test or for pleasure?

Have you noticed that a lot of kids today, in America, do not read for the pleasure of reading?  Maybe it is because their schools do not encourage reading for pleasure, only for the tests they have to take every year.  Forcing children to read for a test and not for the joy of reading is not a good idea but the LOVE of books and reading begins with the home. 

Whether a child starts to read for themselves at 4 or not until they're 7 isn't the issue.   A love of reading comes from being "read to".  I've read to my children since BEFORE they were born.  I read to my daughter almost every night until she was 14 years of age.  Yes, I said 14.  But I started reading aloud to both her and her brother while they were still in the womb.  I read to my son, not at bedtime, he has ADHD, but an hour or so before bed, every night until he was 8.  After that, he read to himself and didn't need my help.

Parents who do not read to their children before the child is old enough to read for themselves will have kids who do not want to read for pleasure.  My daughter loves books.  She reads for pleasure every chance she gets.  All through school she carried her necessary books and at least one she was reading just because she wanted to.  Also reading to your child and helping them read to you gives them better diction and improves their comprehension so they can read "above their grade level". 

There are a lot of things schools can do to encourage reading.  My daughter's elementary school had a contest for reading for pleasure.  The child who read the most books in every grade won a small prize and the child who read the most books in the entire year won a really nice prize.  One year that was my daughter.  She won a nice portable radio/cd/tape player!  But more importantly, she was reading three to five "grade levels" above the grade she was in.  The knowledge of the book read was tested to be sure the child actually read or heard the book, but that was the only point of the test.  Even the kids who didn't win, had bragging rights and the entire school could see who was in the lead because they had a 'race track' above the message board in the cafeteria with little paper horses with the child's name on it and everyone could watch as the horses raced for the end of the year.  The "track" was marked in tens of books.  Also the kids encouraged each other and were allowed to help each other when one got stuck on a word in their book.  This contest was a way that our county school board encouraged reading for pleasure.  They're still doing it and my daughter is now 24 years old.

One of the problems with the current American public school system is that for many years now children are being taught to "sight read" instead of learning to sound out their words.   Those taught to sight read do not learn new words as quickly as those taught to sound out words.  Both my children learned to read at home.  I taught them to sound out their words while their school taught them to sight read.  Both of my children were reading first year college level books while still in seventh grade!

Reading and basic math are the two single most important things any person can learn.  If you can read and sound out new words your world is limitless.  Basic math gives you the skill to live every day.  We don't need Algebra, Calculus or Physics knowledge to live everyday, they're basically just a language for what our brains can do from experience.  Basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division is all the math you need to survive.

The single most important thing anyone needs to be truly free is the ability to read and comprehend their own written language.  If you can read and understand what you read, there are no limits on what you can do or who you can become.  Everything else comes from reading.