we're forgetting the true purpose, the true nature, of reading and writing
"I'm thinking of the teacher who asked for my advice for her pupils who would shortly be confronted with a Sat, where the rubric for the writing test told them to spend exactly 15 minutes on planning their story, and 45 minutes on writing it. Proper writing just doesn't happen like that.
Nor does it always go through the process of planning, drafting, re-drafting, polishing and editing, which teachers are also required to put their unfortunate pupils through. Nor does every piece of work have to be completed. Some stories you aren't ready to write yet, so you put them away for six months or two years and come back to them when you're ready.
There are no rules. Anything that's any good has to be discovered in the process of writing it. Furthermore, there must be a willing suspension of certainty - Keats' negative capability, "the capability of remaining in doubts, hesitations and mysteries, without any irritable reaching after fact or reason". We cannot require everything to take place under the bright glare of discussion and checking and testing and consultation: some things require to be private and tentative.
—
Finally, under reading, we really must learn not to press pupils for a response to everything. A child very seldom wants to talk about something that's made a deep impression: it's too personal, too sacred. But they soon learn what's expected, and they keep a set of stock answers that they have found will satisfy the teacher.
Nor should we demand a response at once. Sometimes the true effect of a story they read or hear in school will not emerge until many years later, and that should be sufficient."
—Philip Pullman/Guardian UK 09.30.03

"We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever."
Philip Pullman