You have a serious prob Dave!
Lol. …
M D R 
My sister and I could both read and write when we started school…my dad was working all hours but my mom was home with us but both made reading and writing a fun thing to do…my confidence took a battering in infant school due to one tyrannical woman who slammed the board rubber down on my desk narrowly missing my fingers just because I hadn’t realised she had aimed a question specifically at me…My mom and dad both went in to school to complain…I moved to junior school and went on to pass my 11+ and gained a place in an all girls school but I was the last year of all girls and the year below me was mixed…I was glad when we moved out of the area…
My 3 kids could all read and write as much as is attainable before entry into play school…My son had a reading age way above average all the way through but a teacher who hated his questioning made his life a misery over the most stupid inconsequential meaningless trivial things and tried to have me prosecuted for his totally understandable subsequent lack of attendance during exam year…
Some may say he threw away his chance of “a good education”…I’d say that people like her should not be allowed around teenagers and no thanks to her (and I hear she got the sack after he left)… I’m proud of his achievements to date…
My grandkids are all bright as buttons and our family love of reading and writing and artistic expression is evident in all of them…they are all under nine years old and so far so good…I think though that at the first sign of bullying or harassment by a teacher against any of them that my two daughters will be making their opinions known…
I can’t actually understand how children can leave school without being able to read or write properly…I can see the problems associated with trying to keep a teenager “on target” especially when the school is under some draconian authority totally detached from real life…but a love of reading and writing and drawing and freedom of expression most definitely begin at home…
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There are rubbish teachers Helen, as in any other field, as someone said, “you can educate monkeys, but it dosen’t make them clever”. 
I think it wise to acknowledge that, based on sound scientific evidence, there is a significant number of children who have great difficulty with decoding written language, and with corresponding difficulties in writing. Most of these youngsters are within the normal range of intelligence, some of them being very intelligent and verbally fluent. Their nervous systems are so disposed to make reading and writing very challenging, and the education system is skewed to methods that rely almost exclusively on the written word, thus guaranteeing that a significant number of children will fail to achieve their true potential, and will be made to suffer as misfits from age 5 to 16 or beyond. Over a decade of purgatorial punishment.
It is not helpful to deny these facts, and not understanding how some children can fail to become proficient in reading or writing is, in my opinion, blinkered and a condemnation of the children who are forced into a one-size-fits-all educational tyranny that manufactures misfits as part of public policy.
Helen you are a progressive and liberally minded woman of exceptional sensibility to individual difference, but I must call you to order here, as I think you are wrong in this respect, and should reconsider your statement in the light of the evidence on dyslexia.
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Peter…I have no problem being “called to order” and have to admit I have no direct experience of dyslexia in my immediate family…In the past I have actively campaigned and raised funds for children who have been classified as having “special needs”…not a description I like…
Before I had my own children my friend had a child with cerebral palsy and fought a long hard battle with the nhs over whether this was caused by hospital negligence at the time of delivery…It took her 15 years to prove negligence but in the meantime the “special school” he was at also became threatened with closure…hence my campaigning and fundraising to keep it open…
After closure of the “special school” where he was thriving she tried to get him admitted to a mainstream school…diagnosis epilepsy and dyslexia…They wouldn’t take him and ironically she ended up leaving his father and moving to France with him whilst leaving her other adult kids in the U.K…
He thrived in France too or more specifically Brittany …even got a job…but sadly they are now back in UK…insurmountable matrimonial/divorce/inheritance problems…
The consultant at the time of his birth was eventually struck off…it wasn’t just her son who was affected…
I do agree that all children are unique individuals…every one a unique expression…there is no one size fits all approach…What is dyslexia…??? What does the medical profession have to say about it…??? How long ago was it identified…???
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Whether you find it offensive or not Bill I still think it was a shame (if you prefer , sadness) that you couldn’t read before or even after, one year at school.
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I really don’t care at all Ann, as I said, Dad was appalled when He discovered I had not been taught to read by the folk trained, employed and paid to to do it!
It’s a shame that he didn’t understand what the school was doing. I presume that you actually believe that none of the groundwork that you had gone through in the classroom had contributed to your breakthrough.
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You must be a teacher (ex), to be so defensive of poor ones Dave.
He was a mechanic, a good one, no pretentions of being anything else. 
I’m not being defensive of poor teachers they exist and always have done but all I am doing is stating facts.
My parents had little interest in helping me with anything, but I was an avid reader of books,newspapers etc. Consequently I was probably ahead of a lot of children by the time I started school. We all have different experiences of teaching, either by our parents or school teachers so there’s no one size fits all. It seemed important to do as well as you could at school, but I’m not sure it’s the same today.
Can you use a dictionary?
I think you are behaving in a ‘Troll Like’ manner Dave, perhaps you should stop digging!
There are several forms of Troll-speak as I learned from Harry Fawcett of beloved memory.
Bill, I’ve translated your post into Troll, as spoken by the English ones, who have been given asylum by Garden Gnomes to whom they are distantly related. If he is a Troll, and reads your post, he will definitely reply in kind:
“Gu ishhinuku ushhaakum gorotu gulavuth shrakeebag shrakehavinor gubag ushrolrag-ragikuth thurazag Dave atherhapakun gorotu ashhoulmar ashtoush ishigginor.”
Dulrag ushhuth shrakesakum thuritarg ushhaakum ininuth, Bill !
All the best with that one, Bill. BTW your in-house logician code-breaker will easily manage to crack this Troll-speak, just as I did.
Shrakonnuth Ashoireuth du gobouakun isheuizz !
That’s French Troll for have a nice evening you two! 
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gORRITT !!!
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Shrakonnuth ashoiréuth à gobouakun isheuizz duussomoth atheteum. Aznignuth ulésoluuth !
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Hakorag! 
Si vous en voudriez les listes alphabétiques qui contiennent tous les préfixes et suffixes trollistes je serais éléphantment ravi de les vous envoyer. Ces petit trucs de mystification linguistique m’ont donnés grand plaisir depuis mon enfance 
Dulleuk ! Inibag ashuth ilouchuth… 
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We use to have a code with my friends when we were kids, and discorver later on, that my mum use to use a similar one when she was a kid too (so she might have understand us) ! Just shown, it’s very hard to discover something new !
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