HJL,
I just read C.L.’s blog on early literacy for children, and I couldn’t agree more with the general trend of her commentary. Whether or not a child ever gets post-K12 education, the child, to the best of his or her ability, should be exposed as early as practical to as wide a variety of literature as possible, and not just what is “suggested” by what ever the local school board expects of them. Probably the best investment in personal education is reading anything and everything that can be gotten a hold of, simply to expose a child (a person, really, as reading should not stop the day that a child graduates from high school) to as many ideas as possible, to improve their general knowledge, and to expose them to different ways of thinking.
It gives the child, and later the person, so many options in regards to problem solving, not only from the amount of knowledge they retain and the different methods of problem solving, but it allows them to make that “magic leap” to solve problems they may not have otherwise been exposed to, even in the extensive reading they have done. The one great treasure, the one great power in the world, is the acquisition and use of knowledge.
As an aside, some of the most intelligent and truly educated people I’ve ever met never saw the inside of a college classroom, and in a few cases, never even finished their formal K12 education. They were self taught through a voracious appetite for reading.
With Respect, – SRG