So long as teachers fail to distinguish between teaching and learning, they will continue to undertake to do for which only children can do for themselves. Teaching children to read is not passing reading on to them. It is certainly not endless hours spent in activities about reading. Douglas insists that "reading cannot be taught directly and schools should stop trying to do the impossible."
Teaching and learning are two entirely different processes. They differ in kind and function. The function of teaching is to create the conditions and the climate that will make it possible for children to devise the most efficient system for teaching themselves to read. Teaching is also public activity: It can be seen and observed.
Learning to read involves all that each individual does not make sense of the world of printed language. Almost all of it is private, for learning is an occupation of the mind, and that process is not open to public scrutiny. If teacher and learner roles are not interchangeable, what then can be done through teaching that will aid the child in knowledge. Smith has one principal rule for all teaching instructions. "Make learning to read easily, which means making reading a meaningful, enjoyable and frequent experience for children."
When the roles of teacher and learner are seen for what they are, and when both teacher and learner fulfill them appropriately, then much of the pressure and feeling of failure for both is eliminated. Learning to read is made easier when teachers create an environment where children are given the opportunity to solve the problem of learning to read by reading.
