WHAT she doesn't know how to READ?

This past weekend was our scout overnight to a Tipi Camp. My troop of Juniors and Cadettes were tipi camping for Friday and Saturday nights. Marley's troop of Brownies and Daisies were coming on Saturday for a one night overnight. Since Marley is MY child and I had to stay for two nights, of course she camped out with the big girls the first night before her troop got there. Because how else was she going to get there?

A funny thing happened when we were there. I came over to a table of my girls (all three of MY OWN girls were there) plus a few of my scouts, one of which is a school teacher's daughter. As I get to the table I hear the (school teacher's daughter) scout say to my older daughter, "she doesn't know how to read??"

Which first of all, is not entirely true. She does TELL people she can't read. She can READ. Not fluently. But she can sound out words. And she is 7 years old.

If she were in school, she would be in first grade, maybe second, I donno. Our town has all day kindergarten so that when they start 1st grade they can start teaching to the test. That is how they get their funding. I don't hate on that. It is what it is for them. They have to keep their funding. And no doubt they are scrambling and tripping over eachother making sure those kids know all the right words and all the right math equations... and the exact right pieces of history. If a kid doesn't read by first grade, how will they learn to fill out all those worksheets? How will they do homework? How will they PASS the test? If everyone passes the same test, then everyone has the same information. If everyone has the same information then we can rest assured that our education system works.

Except that if Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Galilei, Da Vinci (to name a few) all had the same education and same information in their heads, where would we be now? Who knows.

Marley can't "read". She and I were taking a walk the other day and talking about the planets in our system. And what our system was called and all that stuff. But she can't "read". Sometimes she asks me to drill her on math skills (which btw she hasn't ever done a math worksheet) but she can't "read". We read together all the time. She wants me to sit and read with her. She is a barrel of knowledge and she wants to learn. And aparently she doesn't need to be "reading ready" for that. Not here anyway.