For some, the response to the demand that students know more is to put increasingly sophisticated material earlier and earlier into the school curriculum. They reason that if a student has trouble when algebra is introduced (as an example) in the 7th grade, then the solution is to introduce algebra starting in the 2nd grade—and to let it somehow “seep in through the pores of the skin” as the student moves forward. In reality, higher levels of mathematics are understood to the degree that every one of the steps below them have been thoroughly mastered.
It may seem rewarding to say that a young student read a sophisticated work of literature, but if the student hated the whole process and didn’t understand any of it (as it was over their head), then there truly is no victory worth celebrating. You have to give children books at a level that they can read with success. This doesn’t mean coddling children into reading only simple books. The point is certainly to move them up into higher levels, but to do so by moving them along at an incremental progression that promotes genuine progress.
If you were a weight trainer, would you continually insist that a student lift 200 pounds of weight when he couldn’t even lift 100 pounds? Then, when the student continued to fail and suffer and experience heavy strain at the level of 200 pounds, would you respond by giving them special strategy sessions or coping sessions or…? Clearly, it would be much more effective to move the student to a lower level of weight and to vigorously train them upwards from there.
By forcing students to read books above their level, you lock them into a losing situation and promote distaste for reading.
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