Licensing Parents Revisited

Although systems for licensing professionals are far from perfect, and their problems and costs should not be ignored, they are justified as a necessary means of protecting innocent people's vital interests. Licensing defends patients from inept doctors, pharmacists, and physical therapists; it protects clients from unqualified lawyers. We should protect people who are highly vulnerable to those who are supposed to serve them, those with whom they have a special relationship. Requiring professionals to be licensed is the most plausible way of doing that. Given the overwhelming support for the licensing of these professionals, I find it odd that so many people categorically reject proposals to license parents. Although the relationship between a parent and her children is different in some respects, it is also relevantly similar to that between a professional and those she serves. To defend these claims, I show how and why the rationale for licensing parents parallels the rational for licensing professionals. I then ask whether such a program could be justifiably implemented. Finally, I describe and reject what I see as the flawed view of the relationship between parents and their children.     

LANGUAGE BASIS OF READING DISABILITIES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EARLY IDENTIFICATION AND REMEDIATION

In this paper, we present a brief overview of the language basis of reading and reading disabilities. First, we describe the Simple View of Reading, a model of reading that comprises two primary components, word recognition and language comprehension. We then review research showing that language problems underlie most difficulties children have learning to read. Lastly, we discuss implications of these findings for early identification and remediation of reading disabilities.