Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

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.

Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

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

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

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.

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.