:Thebee wrote: "The push for ever earlier school start and reading training, is that not a rather new invention, not that old, ten years?" Nope. I went to a very mainstream ordinary public preschool and kindergarten in the US in the 60's, and I did all the things commonly called "reading readiness" activities today - we learned the alphabet, we wrote our names, we learned the sounds the letters make, the teacher read us stories, we sang songs and learned nursery rhymes, we played games learning to identify letters and numbers, we were encouraged to write and praised if we learned to identify a few simple words. There is nothing new about this. Most of the day was play. Incorporating "reading readiness" so that the children will not be completely unprepared when reading instruction begins formally in first grade is not an idea someone thought of in the past 10 years.