Perhaps if we let them read what they want more and not what we force them to, it wouldn't be such a struggle.
I agree with this. At Smallsteps' age, it isn't such a problem, but maybe later on. She reads what she wants though, and we read to her a lot too. Every second night I read in English to her, and on the other my wife in Finnish. None of these new nonsense books either - the classics :)
Maybe ten years ago it was writing, so we threw tons of money and resources into writing because our scores were low.
And I think that this is why it will always fail, because the money is spent on the school side, not the parent side. It is up to the parents to support this, because the amount they need in order to learn and benefit, can't be done in school alone anyway.
That is good that you do that with your daughter. Nah, parents have more important things to do these days. They have vibrant social lives that can't be interrupted by things like learning.
Some day, when we are all crypto rich, we will do a proper meetup :)
Sounds like a plan!