I went to a parent-teacher conference at the local elementary school with my
9-year old daughter yesterday. She does fairly well, but tends to be
inconsistent, probably due to the ebb and flow in her interest level. This
was evident while discussing reading.

Her teacher was showing us the assignments she had been doing - exercises in
reading comprehension where she is supposed to use a formulaic method of
gleaning meaning from short passages on various subjects, then answer
questions about what they read. All I could think while this was going on
was, man, how boring is this? Just let the kids read what they are
interested in. The rest will come with experience. I think the teachers and
curriculum-makers have forgotten that it took them years of reading
experience to come up with these 'methods', and the kids have no fucking
clue what they are talking about. Just let them know the pleasure of
reading, please.