It looks like you're all arguing that Reading is good.
Who are you trying to convince? Nobody has said Reading ISN'T good.

If you read the forum at thesession.org for a while you'll come across a bunch of people who are quite messianic about not reading music. They aren't capable of putting energy and feeling into anything presented to them on paper so they assume everybody else must be the same. I've met people who think the same way.

It makes no sense at all, since a large proportion of tunes in the tradition got into it through the medium of print (like all the "Dances For the Year..." that Nathaniel Gow published as four-page sheets). Folks who think like that seem to believe that the musicians of Gow's time must have had supernatural abilities to interpret the notation of "The Fairy Dance" musically which have since been lost to the world. (They've probably never read anything with a more realistic take on the human condition than "The Lord of the Rings").

I know of one internationally renowned folkie who claims, for the sake of his image, not to be able to read music, but who in fact does do it in private.