LETTER: Reading is fundamental
Your Nov. 2 editorial, “When the ‘best’ don’t read books,” was right on. When I was in high school in the late 1950s, students were given a list of books to choose to read from during Christmas, Easter and summer vacations. Everyone in my family is an avid reader. When we read, we continue to learn things throughout our lives. We can go places we never dreamed of going by reading books.
When kids graduate from high school nowadays — if they graduate — they read at about a third-grade level and comprehension. Their vocabulary consists of about 100 words, half of which are slang and a quarter of which are acronyms. The U.S. Department of Education is a major failed experiment upon our children’s lives.