One day, a professor entered the classroom and asked his students to prepare for a surprise test. They waited anxiously at their desks for the test to begin. The professor 1the question papers, with the text facing down as usual. 2 he handed them all out, he asked his students to 3 the page and begin. To everyone's surprise, there were no 4 just a black dot（点）in the center of the page. The professor, seeing the expression on everyone's face, told them the following:

    “I want you to write what you 5 there.”

    The students, 6 got started on the inexplicable（费解的）task. At the end of the class, the professor 7 all the answer papers and started reading each one of them aloud in front of all the students. All of them, with no 8, described the black dot, trying to explain its position in the middle of the sheet, etc. After all had been 9 the classroom was silent, the professor began to explain:

    “I'm not going to grade（打分）this. I 10 wanted to give you something to think about. No one wrote about the 11 part of the paper. Everyone focused on the black dot, and the same happens in our 12. We have a white paper to observe and13, but we always focus on the dark spots. Our life is a 14 given to us with love and care and we always have15to celebrate: nature renewing itself every day, our friends around us, the job that 16 our livelihood and the miracles we see every day. 17 we insist on focusing only on the dark spots: the health issues that bother us, the lack of money, the 18 relationship with colleagues, the 19 with a friend, and etc.

    The dark spots are very 20 compared to everything we have in our lives, but they are the ones that pollute our minds.”

    So long as teachers fail to distinguish between teaching and learning, they will continue to undertake to do for what only children can do for themselves. Teaching children to read is not passing reading on to them. It is certainly not endless hours spent in activities about reading. Douglas insists that "reading cannot be taught directly and schools should stop trying to do the impossible."

    Teaching and learning are two entirely different processes. They differ in kind and function. The function of teaching is to create the conditions and the climate that will make it possible for children to devise the most efficient system for teaching themselves to read. Teaching is also a public activity: It can be seen and observed.

    Learning to read involves all that each individual does not make sense of the world of printed language. Almost all of it is private, for learning is an occupation of the mind, and that process is not open to public scrutiny. If teacher and learner roles are not interchangeable, what then can be done through teaching will aid the child in knowledge. Smith has one principal rule for all teaching instructions. "Make learning to read easy, which means making reading a meaningful, enjoyable and frequent experience for children."

    When the roles of teacher and learner are seen for what they are, and when both teacher and learner fulfill them appropriately, then much of the pressure and feeling of failure for both is eliminated. Learning to read is made easier when teachers create an environment where children are given the opportunity to solve the problem of learning to read by reading.