You've got to be kidding

It's like this.  If you tell people something is so for a long enough time, enough people will believe it is so, and a new "fact" is born.

People use only 10% of their brains.

Xmas is used by those who would take Christ out of Christmas.

Summers are hot because it is the season when the Earth is closest to the sun.

Bumblebees should not be able to fly.

Sugar causes children to become hyperactive.

All of the above "facts" are not true.  But, they have been around for quite some time.  And because they have existed for a long time, that is proof enough for many people that the information is true.  "We wouldn't still be thinking it if it weren't true," people say.

Add to this list the "fact" that the ability to read shows greater intelligence.  Two ideas have made this statement possible.  First, there is such a thing as intelligence (so that it can be measured).  Second, good readers have better language "skills" than those who are not good readers.  And, if a person can show that connecting these facts by saying one is an indicator of the other (reading is indicative of higher intelligence), then... voila!... a fact is born.  This particular idea has been in circulation for only 4 generations, but it seems like forever.

First, intelligence has never been proven to exist, and measuring intelligence is really suspect since results rely on responses to logic based on learned written representations for both math and language.  And second, reading consists of correlating sounds to letters or to particular patterns of letters (like the use of silent e to influence a "long" vowel sound), so one has to learn the correlation system in addition to the language they have learned.

The English sound/letter correlation system is a ridiculous system when it is analyzed and requires a skill that is unrelated to learning a language only through hearing.  For example, played and heard should be spelled the same way based on their sound: d to represent the past tense.  But, one has to learn the spelling of a regular verb using the suffix -ed and the spelling of an irregular verb not using the regular suffix of -ed even though the sound is exactly the same.  Ridiculous.  Scandalous really.  Imagine trying to explain to beginners that learning the same d sound for two words signifying tense draws on two categories (regular and irregular) based on a correlation system that is inconsistent at best (irrational according to some definitions of that word).

Well, so be it.  The same people who want to use only 10% of their brains, who don't know the Christian history for the Greek letter "X" (chi), and feel hotter during the summer because they are so close to the sun can just go on believing that the practice of forcing people to learn a flawed, inconsistent, erratic, and less than easily understood sound/letter correlation system leads to greater success in life.  If reading were essential to language development, communication would suffer without it.

Then again... those in education who espouse testing to show progress and intelligence do think that.

Those whose science is language, however, have another category for it.  It's the bumblebees weren't designed to fly category.