I agree, both the learning experience and the acquired skills matter. What's often overlooked is that every child develops at their own pace, and the skills progression taught in schools is based on both normative ideals and descriptive "modal" pace. Offering a child new material that they "should not be learning yet" is not a crime, nor an offense to the child, nor a criticism on other parenting methods (or other children, for that matter).
Not to mention that skills development doesn't occur across a single line. As an example, a child of a friend of mine is now almost two years old, and still vocalizes at most two syllables. Yet she's able to comprehend (and execute) very complicated sentences and commands, in two languages. Still, she's now officially labeled a "deficient" child, with all the counselling and monitoring that that entails...
Someone who are good a at multitude of things but very superficially does not make them more well rounded than one that practices on area more deeply. There are many many many areas that seem to be simple to learn because you can do them very quickly. But thats not what skills are about. Sure you can fake it, but unless you tried to dig deeper into something and learn what it means to learn then you aren't really going to be at a bigger advantage later on in life.
The very act of going deeper into a specific skill is teaching you something that just brushing over a wide area of skills isn't. In fact by going deeper into some of the typical things kids learn you are more likely to be able to also become better at others because you learn what it means to dig in rather than brush over.
Yes you can create a circumstance where literacy is gained through onerous means, but you can use that same hypothetical with pretty much any form of parental guidance till you get to the point where children are now only learning what they want to and not what is necssary.
Pretty big assumption there.
I'd think in context---a child taught how to read in a one-on-one interaction with a parent is more likely to have their difficulties noted and receive help from that same parent, than a child taught how to read in a one-on-fifteen classroom setting.
So I wonder: isn't reading a benefit in and of itself? If there's no direct harm, then it ought to be at worst a waste of time.
Again, that's a big assumption. Plausible problems:
1. developing language skills early stunts development of more visual skills
2. too much structured time has drawbacks
3. "it ought to be at worst a waste of time" ... and additional stress. Opportunity costs could also include relationship capital (pushing your kid to do unimportant things means you can't push as hard in other areas).
The author of the article went into detail as to what possible harm there could be, and why he thought they were avoided or null.
Your stance seems to be summarized as: 'what if parents are thoughtless, naive, and too forceful?'.
In this case, the author was none of that, and really shouldn't be compared to this hypothetical worst case scenario.
> developing language skills early stunts development of more visual skills
This seems incredibly unlikely. I'd in fact bet money that developing any skill young will not stunt the growth of another skill, so long as a normal amount of time is spent invested in that other skill comparative to normal children.
> too much structured time has drawbacks
Indeed, but according to the author all they did was read to the child before dinner, and have them sound out words as they pointed to them. Does 30 minutes to an hour of reading and pointing count as too much structured time?
> Opportunity costs could also include relationship capital (pushing your kid to do unimportant things means you can't push as hard in other areas).
This sounds like a problem of methodology, not of aims. If teaching a child anything causes alienation, then you are doing it wrong, especially if that thing is a basic skill that they must learn.