The paper aims to look into a number of didactic aspects involved in the process of training the reading skill. The reference to the Romanian curriculum for primary and middle school L1 is meant to highlight some difficulties in teaching reading and the expected outcomes under the circumstances. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss any aspect of the international literacy tests applied in the past years in Romanian schools, but the obvious relationship between literacy testing and the fallacy of the “Language and Communication” formula currently used in primary and secondary schools compels some scrutiny of the way the reading skill is perceived as an educational asset. The paper aims to look into the quality of the texts and the tasks associated with them because there is a direct relationship between these and the learner’s level of reading. It looks beyond the comfortable and conventional blame traditionally placed on the students for not achieving the desired level of competences due to, again - conventionally, a suspected failure to read a pre-established list of literary texts. The focus is placed rather on the educational system’s duties to ensure the adequate quality and quantity of text and teaching approach, which means that a shift in the level of awareness of the many aspects involved in training the reading skill will not involve an even longer mandatory reading list for the learners, but will significantly improve their level of literacy.