"Many children are being tortured in school to learn to read and write."

Pedro Valenzuela , a Montessori teacher and guide, is very forceful in the first lines of his book 'Teach Me to Read' : "Please, never force a child to read or write. Never do it ," he insists. "This learning does not depend on the child's age, but on their brain maturation process, it's that simple."

She clarifies to ABC that the diversity of brains—and the diversity of ways in which the brain matures—is enormous. "We can't say what the best age is for a child to learn to read or write, but we do know that there is a gap between three and a half or four years old and seven or seven and a half years old, when the brain areas involved in these learning processes have matured enough to assimilate and incorporate them. Therefore, we must respect the existing diversity and offer each child individually what they need at the time they need it and, very importantly, never compare their process with that of another child," she warns.

In his opinion, by the age of five, between 50% and 60% of children's brains have matured enough to acquire the skills related to reading and writing. "This is an important piece of data that guides us in developing a learning plan. But if we analyze this data, we will soon realize that there are also 40% of students whose brains are not yet ready to acquire this learning. This last group is literally being tortured at school to learn how to read and write, and it is very likely that they will end up hating everything related to reading and not wanting to know anything about a book. And all because they are unable to wait a few months for their brains to mature enough to enjoy the pleasure of learning to read."

Why is this a topic that worries parents so much? It seems like a competition when they see that another child in the class, a neighbor, or a cousin has taken the lead on this issue.

It's a clear reflection of the competitive school model that exists today. While adults compete to see who can teach first, with the sole aim of inflating their egos, thousands of children suffer the consequences of not having their basic developmental needs respected. This causes increased stress in students, leading them to associate learning with discomfort, leading many to end up hating everything related to learning. A true educational crime.

It doesn't matter if your neighbor's child, who goes to the same class as yours and is the same age, already knows how to read; it doesn't matter if a large group in your child's class has already learned and yours hasn't; it really doesn't matter. All we have to do as parents is make sure that our child is following the path established at school for proper literacy learning and that they are following it without any difficulty. And, if so, we can rest assured, because the child will eventually acquire this learning when their brain is ready for it. It's that simple. One of the goals of this book is to explain the best, most effective, and, above all, most respectful path so that you yourself can apply it from this moment on. All of this is combined with practical resources to implement at home and at school from day one, in a very simple way, so that these learnings will greatly facilitate.

If a child learns to read earlier, does that mean he or she is smarter?

It simply means that their brain has matured enough to acquire this learning. Nothing more. The rest is a manifestation of the ego of adults who know little about child development.

The process of acquiring literacy is a complex skill that could be compared to the development and subsequent germination of a plant, as its execution requires the synergy of all parties involved: the child's own development, and the families and educators' respect and care at their own pace. Therefore, our task as families and educators must be to awaken the potential of the seed that resides in the other person, in the person in front of us, in the children we are teaching. Being close to the child is the key. Let them feel our closeness and trust; let us tell them we are happy to be with them, to accompany them on this journey. We speak of language as a means of expression and communication, something very powerful that we human beings need to express, and not an acquisition in which we have to compete to see who achieves it first.

Children are living beings governed by natural laws, just like any other living being, and no matter how hard you force them, they will not be able to develop abilities they are not yet ready for. No developmental process is governed by the urgency and demands of an increasingly fast-paced society: our mission is to accompany them without expecting anything in return.

Are the same pedagogical methods used for this learning as in the past, or has there also been an evolution?

I'm not going to be alarmist and say we're still doing the same old thing, because there are obviously teachers who are constantly training and updating themselves and who offer their students the latest educational improvements. But, unfortunately, they are a minority. Even today, it's incredible that we continue to use outdated methods for learning to read and write in this regard, especially given the information currently available about how a child's brain learns to read and what the best procedures are for both families and teachers to follow in practice.

In this sense, I always like to say that just as it would be unthinkable today for a teacher to smoke while teaching, as was the case when I was in school 25 years ago, in 10 years it will be unthinkable for any teacher to force a child to learn to read and write, because the existing information will be so obvious that no one will dare to do it.

What methods are most effective in the classroom?

Those who begin working on phonemic development at an early age. Phonetic methods begin with sounds and develop into words. Children will learn to segment words into their component letters and link them to speech sounds. This is a very important moment for children in their reading development, as they discover that speech is made up of phonemes that can be combined in different ways, enabling them to eventually compose and create new words.

Today, it has been shown that our brain decodes words phoneme by phoneme; the brain does this when we begin to learn to read, and it always does. When we are expert readers, we process all the spellings and phonemes in a word in parallel, and this gives us a false sense of overall reading, because we do it so quickly. But what our brain continues to do, based on brain activity, is decode phoneme by phoneme.

Many studies show that the greater the phonemic development, the greater the knowledge about the phonemes of speech and language. In this way, learning to read will be faster and more efficient. Therefore, children develop phonological awareness—this knowledge of the sounds of speech, that each phoneme corresponds to a grapheme, that each letter corresponds to a sound—naturally in a linguistically rich environment and in their regular interaction with speaking adults of our species. But we can also promote it in the classroom with rhyming games, phoneme substitution games, syllable games, games of finding the element that begins with a certain sound, and playing with sounds. Play, given that we are talking about very early ages.

And parents, how can they support their children in this learning process?

The first thing I would tell them is to stay calm, very calm. Don't rush, and above all, enjoy the first stage of your children's lives without any expectations. It's the most beautiful stage of life, and it goes by so quickly. And play, play a lot with your children, doing the activities I mentioned earlier. At these early ages, education develops slowly, like a good stew, and for this, good ingredients are needed, a dose of patience, and, above all, respect for the dignity and integrity of the child above all else. We must make reading a habit that we practice daily with our children and students, teaching it explicitly and systematically, as if it were a good physical training plan.

Then I would tell them not to compare, and to have a minimum base of information regarding the process of acquiring reading and writing, because if they know this minimum of information and are aware that their children are being forced to learn to read in school when they are not yet ready, they should speak out and rebel and tell those who carry out these practices that they are making a mistake with very serious consequences: It's obvious; if we force a child's brain to learn something for which it is not yet ready, in addition to not learning it, it is very likely that they will end up hating that learning forever.