I was reading up on reading skills and rediscovered a teaching trick. It seems research shows children whose parents read to them regularly at an early age end up being better readers — and, therefore, more adept at learning and, therefore, more successful in school as well as later in their working lives.
It makes perfect sense. Kids copy grownups around them. That's why Disney and "Sesame Street" include content that appeals to adults. If adults are watching, kids do, too. And they absorb more then.
Especially if the adults talk to them afterward about what they all watched.
That's a useful reminder about a simple but very effective teaching measure, especially now with the release of new results from nationwide standardized student tests.
The results show disturbing drops in the reading ability of eighth and fourth graders. Reading is the most basic and essential skill for children to learn anything in school, then to achieve anything in school, and then in a family and work life beyond.
This takes on heightened importance for the country since the intentional, four-year malfeasance of Joe Biden allowed more than 10 million illegal immigrants to enter and spread throughout the country.
Many are illiterate, and few speak English, which will provide immense educational, social, and financial challenges for local communities (and their taxpayers) for years to come. Any little advantage will help.
The mystery in the new lower test results is why the reading decline appears consistently across racial and economic lines. But not on everyone. The assumption had been the culprit was the school lockdowns and learning from home during the COVID pandemic under Emperor Fauci.
That set everyone back, but some are catching up while others aren't. What's going on? That's the topic of this week's audio commentary.
As always, after listening to the podcast, please do jump into the Comments below with your own theories and explanations.
The subject of the most recent audio commentary, I'm afraid, got me pretty worked up. Joe Biden's Woke priorities forced more than 8,200 of our treasured service members out of the nation's defense forces because they declined to get the COVID shot.
That's an expensive price to pay in training, experience, dedication, and skill to impose ideological and behavioral purity.
Thankfully, among the new president's more than 100 executive actions is a formal invitation to restore those volunteers with a broad range of benefits, including back pay. That's what we detailed and analyzed. And the Comments were interesting.
This week's Sunday column was a little unusual. Not so much political as personal.
I got to wondering how each of us, personally and privately, can handle the frequent assaults of terror on our lives, even when we're not the immediate targets.
It is hard – actually, impossible – for civilized people to conceive of such barbaric joy fueled by high-octane hate. It makes some of us revengeful, angry, or beyond. Even lost perhaps.That’s the point of terror, to suck out reason and take control by imposing an unimaginable horror and inchoate fear on victims and anyone who hears of it.
I decided the best way might be to share my own personal choice on handling the fears and anger.
That seemed to resonate with an unusually large audience. I hope you'll check it out. And leave your reaction and suggestions in the Comments there too. I try to read all of them and respond.
