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Geoffrey Waldon: Understanding; Speech and Reading

“The understanding of speech, really, is the understanding also of what speech represents. So unless you have got the basic understanding first (then) the speech, which is only a reflection of the basic understanding, can have no meaning.
And reading is speech once removed, so to speak, unless you use the reading as a direct means of communication.

“So there is no need to neglect either speech or reading - it would be very wrong to neglect these. But I think it has to be seen that there are certain things which both have greater priority in their own right, as far as the child is concerned, and [which] also make the reading, the language, much more valuable in the long run.”