Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.

So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?

It seems inevitable that the magic of the written word will fade.

Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were.

Although we love the idea of choice - our culture almost worships it - we seek refuge in the familiar and the comfortable.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

But the rule seems to be that the bigger and more life-changing the decision, the less it will seem like a decision at all.