29/08/2026
Jennifer Horgan wrote in the Irish Examiner this week about why children don’t read, and one line has stayed with me all night:
“In Ireland children still don’t have a legislative right to read and so schools aren’t equipped, and aren’t even legally required, to solve the problem.”
That is the whole thing, in one sentence. Not a lack of goodwill. Not teachers who don’t care — I’ve never met one who didn’t. A country that has never written down that a child is entitled to be taught to read.
So when a child can’t, nobody is obliged to fix it. It falls to whoever notices. Usually a parent, at the kitchen table, at nine o’clock at night, with no training and no idea whether what they’re doing is working.
Worth your ten minutes this weekend. Link in the comments.
