You know, when I've remarked that a lot of the responses to my posts feel like people are just plucking out keywords they think they recognise based on the shape of them and replying to what they imagine the post says based on that, the possibility never occurred to me that this is actually how many American schools are currently teaching kids to read.
Like, my assumption this whole time has been that when folks go "I misunderstood this post that says [thing] as saying [unrelated thing] because I mistook [word] for [completely different word that happens to start with the same letter]", that was a bit. What do you mean they're teaching kids a reading method that's tailored to produce this exact error?
Yes!!! And it's so annoying! One of my friends once tried to convince me to do this for homework assignments insisting that it conveyed all the needed information. And... Like... No?! If the writer didn't intend for the words to be read, why would they have written them? My soul is that of an avid reader, and I refuse to do writings that disservice. Either I read them right or not at all.
