Assumptions about how children learn to read have been disproven by research
I've been amazed at how bad people in my peer group (I'm 23) are at reading and writing. Even in college it seemed no one was up to the task of writing a five paragraph essay without major stress. Heaven help them if they tried to read anything above 12th grade reading level or anything written before 1950 (ye olde English is hard, but should be doable).I don't know what the right answer is, but I'm encouraged by the idea of exposing kids to difficult texts early. Kids can learn really quickly when challenged. As long as it is a safe environment (you're not going to be punished for struggling with a too-hard text) I've seen that be very effective. Treating kids like they're dumb is the #1 way to make them dumb.