Why Johnny (Still) Can't Read

choi

Michael S Roth, Why Johnny (Still) Can't Read; We know more than ever about how to teach literacy, but when we test American kids, two-thirds score at low levels of competency. Wall Street Journal, Jan 11, 2017
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-johnny-still-cant-read-1484093037
(book review on Mark Seidenberg, Language at the Speed of Sight; How we read, why so many can't read, and what can be done about it. Basic, 2016)

Quote: "How did humans come to read in the first place? Drawing pictures of animals is one thing, but using arbitrary symbols to stand for speech-sounds that have meaning without resembling that to which they refer—that was a giant leap forward. Reading and writing are technologies that humans developed after many thousands of years, and the first chapters of the book provide a fascinating account of scholars’ best guesses as to how we first began to use abstractions to denote the sounds that make up words. 'To be effective . . . ,' Mr Seidenberg writes, 'the properties of a writing system must align with properties of the spoken language it represents.' Due in part to the number of syllables in our speech, English employs an alphabet that represents both vowels and consonants. Phonetics matters.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest, in part because American children still lag in reading ability despite advances in science how children learn -- according to this book.
(b) The German and Jewish surname Seidenberg is name of many places, from German Seide silk + Berg mountain.
(c) The quotation answers 郭小橹.