It is a fact of life that not all children enter kindergarten at the same point in their educational development. Children with parents who have the time and energy to work with them come to kindergarten a full mile ahead of the children who have not been encouraged and taught by a parent. Ask any kindergarten teacher, and if they are honest, they can quickly tell you the kids who are going to make it in the educational system and the ones who are not. 

I have sat and talked with children at kindergarten signup, and the differences are totally amazing. Some of those children could read and write simple things, knew their alphabet, could tie their shoes and basically were amazing little scholars. I found others who could not write a single letter. Did not know how to read any words. Couldn’t write their own names.

To me this is the worst form of parental abuse of a child, neglect. The parent has already established this child’s position in life by neglecting to prepare them for school.

While working with these pre-kindergarteners a few years ago, I had a parent become irate because she thought what I was doing with the children implied that she was not a good parent. Her response was that “she had them, it was the schools’ job to teach them.” I found this appalling but realized that arguing would solve nothing, so I quietly went off to some other children.

But her reaction is very common, I have found. Many parents want someone else to raise their children. It might be the grandparents, foster parents or the schools. They don’t care. They just want someone else to do it.

One of the primary goals of kindergarten is to prepare the children for reading. In first and second grade, they learn to read. However, at the time for third grade at least 25 percent of the children still cannot read. You guessed it. This 25 percent are the ones who were not prepared for kindergarten, so they entered first grade behind, and then entered second grade behind.

As much as we want children to be successful, sending them on each year when they are not ready is not the answer. I used to cause a lot of anger and disappointment in our administration when I was a teacher because one of my themes was “if you pass a child on who is not ready, you are setting them up for failure.” I never seemed to get this idea through at our school. But our school corporation did do something at the elementary level that other schools may have or, if not, might want to copy.

They have a second grade class just for children who cannot read. Everything these kids do during second grade is focused on learning to read. These kids often come to the library with their teacher. It amazes me how proud the children are when they can finally read and write. They come to the library with big smiles and they happily seek out books to take home and read.

While the success rate might not have been as high as we might wish, these kids did make tremendous gains. Gains that might be life altering just from one second-grade class.

People who cannot read make up a huge percentage of the prison population. The inability to read leads many to become frustrated and drop out of school. These people are almost unemployable. They face a lifetime of living on the public dole either in prison or out.

It is in the best interest of our society that these kids read so that they might increase their chances of being more successful in life. I agree with the proposition that every third grader should be able to read.

To accomplish this is going to take a lot more effort from parents and special programs at school for students before they get to third grade. It may take holding some children back in first and second grade.

The sad truth is that this may not happen. The schools are already stretched thin and facing budget cuts. They do not have the money nor the buildings to accommodate a lot of repeated grades.

Parents more and more seem to think of their offspring as belongings and not something to nurture and put a lot of effort into. It is time for society to change.

That is what I think. What do you think?

• Gordon Southern is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.