Our human brain was not designed to read

It's true. We tend to believe that when we are born we should just naturally, or with a little guidance, begin to read like we begin to talk. Reading however is not a natural process. Kids do not naturally pick up skills because you put a book in front of them. We are each born being able to process oral language. There is an area of our brain that is dedicated to oral language development so we are born to communicate through speech. We are also born being able to process visual images. We have a visual system in our brain that helps us make sense of things, including written words. We are not though born with connections between those two parts of the brain and we must build a bridge between the oral language and visual image processing. We have to learn to take the shapes that we see and translate them into meaningful information. Through this manner of connecting the visual to the knowledge and vocabulary we build through oral language and life experiences, we read.