I beg to differ. Ask yourself what is the purpose of reading. We read merely to complete communication. Without the communication aspect there is no reason to read. Thus, reading must include comprehension of the message we are decoding.
Ask yourself what is the purpose of reading.
That was my point exactly. What is the point in of walking? What is the point in speaking? Well, what is the point in living?
The point is that (i) it is the person's right to decide how to use those instruments of life and life itself: as a parent you merely endow the child with those instruments. The parallel with speaking is particularly accurate: you teach the child to pronounce words properly without and do not even bother with the meaning attached them. "This is a bird," you say, "Say: bird..." And that's all. It is only later that you engage in comparisons from which the child learns to differentiate birds and dogs, say. The second point is that, even if you deny the right to construct the meaning and take it upon yourself to transmit it --- you quickly find yourself unable to do so. Hardly any parent can explain mathematics, for instance --- including people that took and use calculus, say. What mathematics is and how it is done is mostly unknown even to educated people. What is the meaning of war? peace? friendship? love? hate?
To be sure, you do answer child's questions at the rudimentary level. But the true meaning of these words is a debatable and philosophical matter. You simply cannot transmit it to the child.
In sum, it's both not right and impossible to transmit the meaning to any appreciable extent. What you give is the mechanical ability to read. And THEN the learning begins. The child reads, discussed what (s)he read with you and subsequently teachers in school, college, etc. --- and from THAT decides on the meaning. Naturally, it's a life-long process.
We read merely to complete communication.
That too is the modern mantra. Again, substitute "speak" for "read" --- do you insist that the child "understands" what fatherhood is when you teach him/her to pronounce "daddy?". For centuries, people have taught children to read, count, write, sing, walk in the same manner: do it first, do it well, and then decide how you are going to apply it and what to make of it. Critical thinking is an altogether different faculty that is and must be cultivated separately, and reading is merely an instrument for that. In recent decades, the "revolutionaries" convinced you that reading is different form speaking, walking, etc. It is not. The empirical evidence is overwhelming: after decades of teaching mechanic of reading simultaneously with conceptualization, the American public is more ignorant and uneducated than at any time in its history.