One of the biggest recent changes in education has to do with how we learn to read and write and how this is taught in schools.

There have been many sweeping changes in our Western way of life introduced after the war.

Television arrived. People from one end of a country to the other listened to the same programs, watched the news, followed the soaps, loved and laughed at the same figures, together. And as they did, they began to talk and think and dress the same way. People moved into cities away from the countryside, schools got bigger and school budgets smaller.

One of the biggest and most profound changes to take place was to do with how our children are taught to read.

The tried and tested Phonics approach went out the window and kids were left floundering,

The result is that many children leave primary school unable to read properly.

Diane McGuinness tackles this head-on in her book “Why Children Can’t Read” And What We Can Do About It.

Her analysis of the changes in the education system in the English speaking world in recent generations is vital to understanding what went wrong and why.

Hers is not a narrow view. She compares the development of spoken language and the reading and writing systems developed in such different languages and cultures as Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Sumerian, Russian, Hindu, Arabic, Hebrew cultures, cultures both present and past and brings it together into a simple, logical system that works.

This is one of the most vital books you can read if you want to understand a key factor in development and continuing existence of our culture.

Being able to read and to write are vital skills in our modern world.

Individual prosperity and cultural richness are interdependent, built on a bedrock of language, spoken and written and read with understanding.