A Strange Fact About Not Learning to Read

• The fact that we should find strange is that being poor or from a minority group hinders you from learning how to read. This fact is strange because one of the goals of education is to create a sense of equality among students. Stating that one group struggles reading because of their background is discrimination. What teachers need to realize is that the link between poverty and learning to read is not because poor children are "being less good at learning than rich kids". According to Gee there was no difference between the capability of a poor student and a privileged student playing Pokemon. The disturbing thought however is that the school system doesn't feed of students' likes. This causes the student to lose interest because it isn't something that motivates them to learn therefore they fall behind and turn into struggling readers.
• There is a major difference in traditionalists and progressive educators. Traditionalists teach in a "kill and drill" step by step method. They start with phonemic awareness then move to phonics, fluency and comprehension. It is an "assembly line" process. The progressive approach focuses more on making meaning with the text. Students can't learn to read by exposing it to them one time. Reading is not a natural process like learning to walk. This doesn't necessarily mean that reading is an instructed process. Instructed processes are how you acquire knowledge. Natural processes are built withing and happen easily for most. There is also cultural processes which are things that are so important to a group that they ensure everyone who needs to learn these "things" will. Although reading is taught as an instructional process in school, humans learn better by cultural processes.
• According to the author the "fourth grade slump" occurs because students have to rely on reading to learn. When the content becomes to difficult to read then they fall behind. 
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