Reading failure and remediation

“If children are to become capable of realising their potential in later life, they must acquire the basic tools that a twentieth-century society demands. We have failed if a group of children leaves school without any real knowledge of how to understand and handle these tools. If a child leaves school unable to read or inhibited from reading because of continuous difficulties, he suffers a communication handicap which will sharply affect his choice of career, his earning capacity and his role as a member of a society whose daily bread is the printed word.”