Paul Thomas, an experienced high school teacher who became an experienced college professor at Furman University in South Carolina, writes here about the ongoing controversy surrounding claims for “the science of reading.” As he notes (and as I wrote about in my book Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform), the “crisis” in reading instruction and literacy has recurred with stunning frequency over the course of the past century, plus.
Debates about how to teach reading can be traced back to the early 19th century, when Horace Mann derided the teaching of the alphabet and advocated learning whole words. Warring camps argued over the best way to teach reading. In 1955, Rudolf Flesch published Why Johnny Can’t Read, denouncing whole-word instruction and insisting on a revival of phonics. In 1967, literacy expert Jeanne Chall published what was supposed to be the definitive work on the teaching of reading, called Learning to Read: The Great Debate; she recommended phonics in the early grades and a rapid transition to worthy children’s literature. In the 1980s, the whole-language movement swept through the reading field, deriding phonics as Mann had. In the 1990s, the National Reading Panel emphasized the importance of phonics. No Child Left Behind absorbed the conclusions of the National Reading Panel Report and included a large grant program called Reading First, requiring that schools use “scientific methods” of teaching reading. The program, however, was marred by scandals and self-dealing. Some consultants hired by the U.S. Department of Education recommended programs in which they were coauthors and stood to profit.
Thomas writes:
The SoR [Science of Reading] movement is a bandwagon with its wheels mired in the same muddled arguments that have never been true and silver-bullet solutions that have never worked.
My conclusion: There is no one best way to teach reading. Experienced teachers have a toolkit of methods, and they use whatever method works best for their students. All reading teachers should know how to teach phonics, and all reading teachers should understand when it is appropriate to teach phonics. All reading teachers should prioritize the joy of reading and the love of literature.
In time, almost everyone learns to read, regardless of method. John Dewey, it should be noted, recommended that children begin reading instruction at the age of 8. Currently, many states punish students who have not learned to read fluently by the age of 8.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The last paragraph is why I founded a private school. Six year olds are given a form of dyslexia a platter by school districts who don’t know how a brain grows and develops. But I guess its good news for all the “learning specialists”. Got to have something to fix…
Joanne,
I fight this label and testing of my children by refusing to allow schools to test them on tests that tell us absolutely nothing about what the reader is doing in understanding text.
Joanne & Stef: I have a different angle on this—strictly anecdotal Mom experience, buttressed by those of friends of my kids. Perhaps it was unique to our district: high-income with a lot of very smart kids and a competitive atmosphere. My 2 out of 3 IEP kids would have been considered plenty smart in the small-class, individualized ed I got as a rural kid 40 yrs prior. But I perceived this schsys as a rat-race where they would languish without extra attention and accommodations for such things as ‘not good at timed tests’ (a quality which was actually understood as a ‘thing’ when I was coming up in the olden days, & was worked around). Also we paid outrageous REtaxes for the schsys, the SpEd dept was superlative, it seemed a no-brainer to work with them. They got high-quality ed & were well-prepared for college.
That thought that one’s learning style if ID’d early as a problem would snowball—not our experience. This may again just be due to the peculiarity of the district, loaded w/nerdy parents [due to proximity of pharmaceutical labs] whose kids ran the gamut from conventionally intelligent to nonconformists of every stripe, & no small # with Tourette’s, “ADHD,” Asperger’s etc—most (like ours) with strengths in non-book/ pencil avocations which garnered ever-widening social networks.
So I have to wonder how much of the concern with getting extra help is a product of the social atmosphere of the school/ district— shaming– that needs to be separated from whether classification is actually appropriate and helpful. If the shaming/ feeling stupid is overwhelming, that can tilt the balance. I remember my eldest telling me at age 15 that perhaps he should have taken my advice to try a private school where he’d have found many more kids like himself: there would have been so much less struggle. But he was a fighter & ultimately gained respect of peers. And the younger one actually thought he was slower than others, and accepted it, but realized his comparative strengths in college.
And of course the whole other question of whether the SpEd Dept in the district is any good at all.
My third was long a victim of our peculiar sort of hi-priced schdistr which is great w/gifted & ‘different learners,’ but the middle gets steamrolled. Again thanks to being the hi-priced spread we actually have one of those leftovers from the ‘70’s, an ‘alternative’ hisch, project-based, still ongoing, located w/n the hisch bldg. That was a lifesaver for him.
It all strikes me as a drag-race with pit-stops to repair those who don’t conform to some top-down imposed mean. Very little of it would be necessary if all pubschs had smaller classes.
Can’t understand 2nd line?
Two of my three siblings have profound dyslexia tho the term wasn’t known yet (in schools anyway) until the younger of the two was in jrhi. (At which point we realized my Dad had it). Even when my kids were in elemsch in ’90’s I don’t think they were testing for it that young– are those tests any good? (I mean just as they’re starting reading instruction??)
I could tell my eldest’s bff probably had it tho he was only 6, but that was because his pattern was so like my brother: crazy-advanced spatial ability [doing lego constructions designed for teens, etc] coupled w/ major difficulty w/ early reading instruction. My sis had different ‘tells’ that were the same as a 1st cousin also later diagnosed: ambidextrous (and w/feet too, showed up in sports), plus being able to do things backwards or forwards like knitting.
Just can’t picture a pencil/ paper test being appropriate that young– as a Mom & as a PreK Span special, have often noted kids age 3-6 don’t perceive the diff between backwards letters or letter-sequences until a certain (variable) point.
Reading is decoding. Decoding is straight lines and curved lines. 6 year olds don’t care that much about straight lines and curved lines. If they don’t invest brain time in it, they are then labeled as a problem. Then the problem snowballs.
You say:
“In time, almost everyone learns to read, regardless of method.”
How can you be so naive and reckless with your unfounded opinions!
As a reading specialist currently working with 45 struggling readers, I am angered and aghast. I have to teach now, so I will respond at length later. I do know that Paul Thomas decries epistemological trespassing, so what exactly is your expertise that allows you to make this pronouncement?
Do you have stats to suggest that a majority of the public is functionally illiterate?
Roy Turrentine You can find related statistics by researching the National Literacy Association (NLA) and related adult education organizations.
I have posted here off and on about these programs with the idea that a better collaboration between them and K-12 at some level would benefit the whole.
But problems associated with poor adult literacy, and organizations that treat them, suffer from the same kinds of problems that public education in general suffers from: their work doesn’t make quick money. For many reasons, and in my view, adult literacy is a much bigger problem than most understand.
aaace-nla@googlegroups.com aaace-nla@googlegroups.com CBK
Roy Here is another link for research on adult literacy and education. CBK
Coalition on Adult Basic Education
P: 888-44-COABE (888-442-6223) | F: 866-941-5129 | http://www.COABE.org | PO Box 1820 Cicero, NY 13039
Harriett,
There is no program or method. As a reading specialist myself I am angered at all of these products beings sold when it is about the knowledge of the reader and teacher together.
I am angered that anyone who doesn’t pass a certain “literacy” test in kindergarten is labeled as deficient etc.
Dyslexia is a dangerous label that I refuse to have my own children marked as.
As a reading specialist I agree with everything Diane says. I would add that a knowledgeable teacher is the best way for any reader to acquire literacy..
Our current standards based lessons, programs etc won’t cut it. Not to mention pushing reading way too early.
We know better but we also know many are making money off of these so called deficits.
A too early identification of “reading problems” results in an over identification of “classified” students. I distinguish between those that are hard to start and those that have systemic problem. Lots of poor students including poor ELLs are by definition hard to start, but a well trained teacher will help these students become fluent readers. I worked with ELLs from very poor countries. Few of my students became classified. Some students have neurological issues that require the assistance of teacher trained in dyslexia like Orton Gillingham. These students may a processing or a visual problem associated with what is commonly called a “learning disability.” It is important to understand the difference.
Well I’m taking umbrage on Diane’s behalf for the tone of this reply. “Naïve, reckless, unfounded opinions, epistemic trespass, what exactly is your expertise.” I guess you own the epistemic territory with your 45 struggling readers– a world-class ed researcher/ historian/ ed policy analyst/ author is a trespasser?? Wow.
Perhaps the debate rages because no one properly defines it. Much debate that seems most bitter is due to the lack of proper definition. What does it mean to read?
It means one thing for a young kid, something different for an early adolescent, and another thing for a college kid. After that, it means different things to different people. My brother reads very closely. He can learn to build something by reading about its construction. My daughter reads like a grass fire tears through a sage grass field, alive with the emotion of each story. Both are reading, but their behaviors are very different.
So why can people not just accept that this is too complex to be decided by political leadership? Or decided by the layman who happens to be wealthy? Must be a motivation external to the problem. Perhaps somebody wants to make money off it.
Roy The deeper question is one of working from an adequate cognitional theory . . . including well-researched developmental theory. CBK
My elementary career spanned from 1968 to 2001. As a Title I reading teacher, elementary classroom teacher, and district reading consultant, I agree with your statement that “in time, almost everyone learns to read, regardless of method.” I do part company, however, with the statement “…the whole-language movement swept through the reading field, deriding phonics…” Phonics as a decoding skill was not derided, but placed in its rightful place as one decoding skill. I still recall one of the giants in the reading field, Dr. Donald Durrell, pounding the podium as he addressed the International Reading Association Convention yelling, “If you’re still teaching your pupils to read by sounding and blending, I want you to stop it right now! Our language is meaning-based, not sound-based.” Famed psycholinguist, Dr. Frank Smith, was often quoted: “Phonics is easy, if you already know how to read.” He would point out that phonics works best when one reads words right to left, and he would give as an example that you don’t know how to pronounce “ho” until you see what letters follow: hotel, hot, honor, hog and so forth. These leaders in the field of reading in the 80s were not putting phonics in the dust bin, but trying to help us understand that reading was much greater than the sum of discrete skills packaged in a teacher’s manual. Indeed, the children having the most difficulty “cracking the code” spent more of their time on letter sounds and the like than they did on experiencing and enjoying real reading. Perhaps Dr. Edmund Henderson said it best: “One of the perils of most phonics programs is the implication sometimes conveyed that there is but one way of looking at words, that letters and sounds are the whole story, or the structural patterns are the whole story, or that these categories we decree are rigid and without exception.” Finally, it is probably still true today what Dr. John Manning said in 1972, “The single major variable as to whether or not a child will succeed in first grade reading instruction is if the child was read to at home in the preschool years sitting on Mother’s lap or Daddy’s knee.”
Very helpful and “readable,” thanks!
There is an assumption embedded in every school day that all it takes is ONE PERSON teaching “reading” for 90 minutes a day or teaching a sliver of actual reading in a departmentalized 5-8 ELA class.
If you want to teach kids to read, you need to add these folks to the list of ‘teachers’ – parents and caregivers & EVERY teacher. Every day. Every opportunity.
1) The love of reading begins at birth. Day 1. A book in the parent’s hand. Within months, it’s something to grab and hear words. Cuddling with a book is an emotional attachment with words and care that can’t be “intervened” or “retaught” in later years (and NO TV until at least 2 or 3 and no devices until…)
2) Birth to 5 – surrounded by reading (books, magazines, print newspapers (please – yes) and people reading (anything except a screen), love of words, vocabulary,
3) EVERY TEACHER IN A SCHOOL IS A TEACHER OF READING! It does not take a graduate degree or rocket science for a teacher or “trained” adult to make every lesson a “reading teachable moment.”
Break down the word. Sound it out. What does this word sound like. Choral shout out with proper pronunciation. PREVIEWing the science or history text “these are the words that are going to come up.” CONTEXT. Background knowledge. Relevance. Cultural relevance. Interesting reading.
Favorite poster: Top Ten Ways To Become A Reader: 1. Read. 2. Read. 3. Read. 4. Read…. 10. Read
JH The first big “DUH” in education was about having smaller classes. The second big “DUH” is as you say,
“1) The love of reading begins at birth. Day 1. A book in the parent’s hand. Within months, it’s something to grab and hear words. Cuddling with a book is an emotional attachment with words and care that can’t be ‘intervened’ or ‘retaught’ in later years.”
On the other hand, “no TV until 2”? . . . and then there’s Sesame Street and Curios George. CBK
The so-called science of reading is the same recycled baloney brought to us by those that seek to monetize pubic schools. Software developers are looking to make a killing selling phonics software to public schools. The teaching of phonics fits perfectly into a money making scheme as sound-graphemic relationships can be divided into discrete parts that lend themselves to rote instruction. It is a money maker for software developers. When they advise that the study of phonics should be systematic, it creates the possibility of many levels of software $$$.
The “science of reading” shows more about the monetization of our schools than pedagogy. Commercial interests want to sell more products, and more products equal more profit. Schools need to be good consumers that spend public funds wisely.
I have helped many struggling readers to become successful readers. My advice is to always start with the student. If the student already knows understands and uses the sound system, do not waste time on it. If they need work on the sound-graphemic relationships, help students learn them either in context or in isolation. My own opinion is that learning phonics in context is better as it as it connects to the whole learner. A skilled reading teacher really has no need for phonics software, but a novice, particularly a minimally trained, one may find it helpful. Does this silly “science of reading” argument have a hidden agenda that portends more deprofessionalizing of teaching?
I’ve wondered over the years about whether there are ideological biases that influence debates about how to teach reading and mathematics. Rules first, concepts to follow? Is there an authoritarian bias in emphasizing phonics and algorithms first?
I’ve only got a ten-minute break between my reading intervention sessions, so let me repost what I said about one of your pieces in response to a previous blog:
My hope is what Camins hopes, that students “will learn to make decisions based on evidence, to admit when they are unsure, and change what they think when evidence suggests they are wrong.” In his piece “Teaching: The Front Line in the War over Truth”, Camins says:
“Students can and should develop the habit of mind to search for reliable data, learn how to interpret that data to establish evidence to justify, reject, and revise conclusions. They need to develop the inclination and skills to do so across multiple disciplines. Unless that happens, we cannot hope to reverse the alarming dismissal of evidence in the public arena. This is job one for every teacher.”
I believe this is also “job one” for every blogger. I hope that the next time someone weighs in on reading instruction, they ask themselves the questions Camins poses:
What is my evidence?
What preconceptions influence my thinking?
What evidence challenges my ideas?
Should I change what I think?
Recommended Reading:
Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read, Stanislas Dehaene
The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads, Daniel Willingham
Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t, And What Can Be Done About It, Mark Seidenberg
Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, David Kilpatrick
Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us About How to Teach Reading, Diane McGuinness
Well, that was ten minutes wasted. What sanctimonious, condescending drivel. Just curious, do you speak and are you able to think in other languages?
Just to clarify: I was quoting Arthur Camins. Exactly which part is “sanctimonious, condescending drivel”?
I will admit to having confused my response. The first sentence was in response to the comment above, the rest was mostly in response to the drivel you posted at the top of this thread and also to your “reading list.”
The reason I asked about other languages also applies. But on reconsideration, it doesn’t have to be about other languages, it is more about your native language. How do human beings learn the essentials of their native language? Do they read pedagogical books (Oy!), or do they learn by listening, repetition, and context? I think in two native languages, both of which I learned by listening and living. I didn’t speak a word of English in my first day at an American kindergarten, was in the “top” of my class by the middle of 2nd grade, had forgotten my native language by the time I entered an American DoD school in 3rd grade back in my native country, and relearned my native language by mid-4th grade mostly through reading Asterix comic books and living in a non-American neighborhood. I mostly learned English not because of academic pedagogy, but because I had schools and teachers that gave me time to read what I wanted to read.
Your “scientific method” of “learning” reading is just ridiculous in my opinion. Is that how you learned your native language? And more importantly, is a utilitarian view of reading better than just giving kids time and opportunity to read and think for themselves? I think not.
I am astounded by your eagerness to pontificate on a subject you clearly know little about. My first language was Greek. I later learned English, French and German. More importantly, from the foreword to Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading (1997), by Diane McGuinness:
“Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write”. — Charles Darwin
“More than a century ago, Charles Darwin got it right: Language is a human instinct, but written language is not. Language is found in all societies, present and past. All languages are intricately complicated . . . All healthy children master their language without lessons or corrections. When children are thrown together without a usable language, they invent one of their own. . . Until recently, most children never learned to read or write; even with today’s universal education, many children struggle and fail. A group of children is no more likely to invent an alphabet than it is to invent the internal combustion engine. . . Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on. This basic fact about human nature should be the starting point for any discussion of how to teach our children to read and write. We need to understand how the contraption called writing works, how the mind of the child works, how to get the two to mesh. It is a national tragedy that this commonplace understanding has been so uncommon. . . All the familiar techniques were devised before we had a scientific understanding of reading, and they are based on theories that we know are wrong. Parents and policymakers are bewildered by contradictory advice from a slew of well-meaning but uninformed romantics, oversimplifiers, entrepreneurs, and quacks.”
Many of the responses in this blog are replete with the sentiments of well-meaning but uninformed romantics and oversimplifiers.
Harriett Janetos “Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; while no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write”. — Charles Darwin
This also is a response to your quote from Guinness, in part: “All the familiar techniques were devised before we had a scientific understanding of reading, and they are based on theories that we know are wrong. Parents and policymakers are bewildered by contradictory advice from a slew of well-meaning but uninformed romantics, oversimplifiers, entrepreneurs, and quacks.”
A couple of things: First, Darwin’s view has some value for understanding ourselves, but it is also severely stunted where human intelligence, development, and language is concerned . . . I am surprised to hear of its presence still in today’s discourse. Along with our ability to language our “instinctive tendency” is manifest through our intelligence . . . and so we teach our children through speaking and writing according to that intelligence; as we “pass down” knowledge to them along with how to be a human being.
VOILA! Darwin died. He could not speak to us through sound. But he had a history and could pass down his knowledge to us (such as it is) through his own intelligent functions . . . through his writing.
Human “instinct,” if you will, is to develop ourselves, and to “culture” ourselves, with the intelligent capacities we have which includes the ability, again, to language and to express ourselves in other ways, like in the other aspects of the arts. And so besides ONLY speaking-hearing, we also use our intelligence to write-read and intelligently build fires, bake, brew, and a multitude of other things that Darwin’s stunted view apparently cannot account for.
Second, cuddling and being with our children while teaching them anything including reading, is to combine their inborn intelligent outreach with the love and care of others . . . in the company of which we develop humanly.
Third, if contradictory advice comes “down” to parents and policy-makers, it’s because the theoretical fields they draw from are often just that: contradictory. Is there any clue in there for you?
Such contradiction doesn’t mean we are all, teachers and researchers, permanently off track, or partly so, as Darwin was. The collective “we” have not found a way to interrelate the scientific fields with themselves, much less with the arts and humanities, which also have scientific “sides.” If and when that occurs, we will be able to understand ourselves and the world with a view towards a dynamic unity. We’re obviously not there yet. Again, that should tell us all about our present educational background?
But teachers are not so ignorant as you seem to think . . . first, because we can generally acknowledge that their overriding purpose is to help their children to develop humanly and to understand for themselves; and because they are intelligent enough to understand (1) the complexity of children and the home and cultural backgrounds they bring to the classroom, (2) the value of the research community that they draw from, even though they are commonly tolerant about it . . . they know of contradictions and that they are sometimes way off track (in my view, as is Darwin’s intellectual progeny); (3) but they also know that research and theory still provide usable “tools” for their toolbox that can inform their ongoing understanding and their pedagogical abilities. They have other things to do besides exploring theory and doing research full time, like run institutions and teach our children. We live with the benefits of a differentiation of functions in our fields? That’s a good thing, btw, but can be distorted and abused, of course.
Finally, I would be careful in your writing on such a blog that sometimes interfaces theory and research with people who do applications of it, where you are so easy to expose your arrogance by your own faulty set of assumptions. Such exposure just ends up giving scientists a bad name, and you don’t want that among people who need science and who are genuine about what they do for our children.
BTW, the Guinness quote is probably the worse thing I have read in years of exploring the interface between philosophy and the other scientific fields. Besides the arrogance thing, I would get up-to-date about more recent and more adequate cognitional theory. CBK
I rest my case.
If what you wrote isn’t the response of a romantic, I don’t know what is.
1) We are wired for sound, not print.
2) Speaking is natural, reading isn’t.
3) We must be taught to read.
4) Not all reading methods are created equal.
5) The NAACP is suing a neighboring district precisely because it understands this.
6) Read cognitive scientist Daniel Williingham and neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene on reading.
7) Talk to the parents of dyslexic children.
8) Listen to Emily Hanford’s podcast At a Loss for Words.
9) Reread Arthur Camins about making decisions based on facts.
10) Cite research rather than romantic notions to support your points.
Okay, my children were right–I’ve got to stop reading this blog. It’s simply not good for my mental health!
Harriett Janetos If you are up to it, see my brief responses below at CBK: to your brief, might I say doctrinaire, one-liners.
If what you wrote isn’t the response of a romantic, I don’t know what is.
CBK: No, it’s not; and I don’t think yours is a critical comment at all. You have NO IDEA of my work or theoretical background; so your response, in my view, is totally dogmatic.
1) We are wired for sound, not print.
CBK: We are intelligent who develop (if you want citations, I’ll be glad to supply them). (“Wired”? Is that a technical term?)
2) Speaking is natural, reading isn’t.
CBK: Both speaking and reading are developments of human intelligence, which is natural to us and includes language expressions, both spoken and written.
3) We must be taught to read.
CBK: Yes. Both speaking and reading/writing are further developments of what we have learned and how we express ourselves. From your earlier note, you learned to speak and then to write in different languages. As I suggested earlier, a good learning theory (how we learn) will show that: to call one “natural” and the other not natural is a false distinction.
4) Not all reading methods are created equal.
CBK: True . . . neither are the needs of children in any particular classroom?
5) The NAACP is suing a neighboring district precisely because it understands this.
CBK: What? I don’t know what you are talking about here, so I cannot comment. Obviously, however, there is disagreement there (as suggested earlier, what do you suppose that suggests?).
6) Read cognitive scientist Daniel Williingham and neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene on reading.
CBK: And if I cite my references here, you are going to jump to reading them. Your work on this site, however, screams of positivist reductionism . . . which usually ends with “reduced” theoretical orders that, in turn, flow into policy, especially in human fields. Over-testing is one of those orders.
7) Talk to the parents of dyslexic children.
8) Listen to Emily Hanford’s podcast At a Loss for Words.
CBK: I’ll put these on my reading list. I offer to you a non-positivist theoretical work: Insight, A Study of Human Understanding by Bernard Lonergan and/or various collections of his writings on cognitional theory and philosophy.
9) Reread Arthur Camins about making decisions based on facts.
CBK: I’ve enjoyed Camins’ writings here and think it sound thinking (pun intended) to understand and collect facts before making judgments, and then making decisions about what to say and do. (If you had read some of my more recent notes here, you would know that.)
10) Cite research rather than romantic notions to support your points.
CBK: Citations are another “duh” in academics, of course, but only sometimes on blogs, as is the use of technical language. Also, I’m trying to look past your insulting attitude, not to mention your apparently closed mind; but in this case, your interpretation, (romanticism), is way off base, to say the least. But it’s not about that anyway?
Also, I offered to cite in an earlier note, and have done so above. But there is also in my own work references to the Greek philosophical writers (Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, for example); and a string of later writers in philosophy and psychology, e.g., Jung and Dewey (as example). But we should note that reading theory answers the question: How do we learn to read? and THAT question rests on the more remote question of How do we think and learn?” which, in turn, concerns cognitional theory. And since cognitional theory has components that concern knowing/truth/reality, it has to stretch into philosophical foundations. Brain research alone, by any name, just doesn’t cut it.
Okay, my children were right–I’ve got to stop reading this blog. It’s simply not good for my mental health!
CBK: Okay, but you might be wrong about that. On the other hand, I agree with them if they mean that you need to calm down and cease the insults, OR perhaps open up to new (to you) thinking. I’ll post some other citations in another note and hope not to bore everyone here to death.
But basic to THIS blog is that, after being immersed in educational issues for a long time, Diane Ravitch had a MAJOR turnaround insight about what was going on in the field of education; and she is relentless about correcting a long-term comprehensive error and subsequent direction that is still going on. And anything we discuss here about cognitional theory and brain research can only be superfluous. CBK
If you could cite specific books or articles showing that reading and writing are as natural and inevitable as speaking, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!
3) We must be taught to read.
CBK: Yes. Both speaking and reading/writing are further developments of what we have learned and how we express ourselves. From your earlier note, you learned to speak and then to write in different languages. As I suggested earlier, a good learning theory (how we learn) will show that: to call one “natural” and the other not natural is a false distinction.
Babies are not born knowing how to read. They must be taught. No question about that.
Diane Babies are not born talking in a language either?
Writing and reading are merely further extensions of our intelligent development and, through it, our ability to communicate meaning to one another. Writing/reading goes beyond oral communications to create the potential for communicating over long periods of time . . . making the possibility of orderly, fluid movements in history.
KNOWLEDGE is able to be built-up and transferred from one generation to another through reading/writing. Libraries are holders of that knowledge. We cultivate ourselves through it or create highly specialized cultures as a result. Think of the writings and ancient art on cave walls. Oral learning commonly comes first. But through non-oral expressions, we can communicate “down” to further generations. Writing and reading is merely a refinement of that same intelligent ability to “say” meaning, and to objectify-other and express ourselves. CBK
Thank you, Diane. I know you are a tireless advocate for our nation’s children. This is admirable, which is why I don’t want anything to dilute your advocacy–and I believe that your views on reading instruction might be misinterpreted and do just that.
My district, like many, is in the process of exploring the science of reading in order to help our teachers move away from Balanced Literacy to what I am calling Layered Literacy–teaching that is COMPLETELY immersed in speaking, listening and ‘authentic’ literature. However, within this essential context, we are helping teachers understand the science of reading which allows, as neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene says, the “mental revolution” necessary for children to learn how to read–especially important for those children who simply will not crack the code without explicit instruction. Dehaene writes:
“The goal of reading instruction becomes clear. It must aim to lay down an efficient neuronal hierarchy so that a child can recognize letters and graphemes and easily turn them into speech sounds . . .Considerable research converges on the fact that grapheme-phoneme conversion radically transforms the child’s brain and the way in which it processes speech sounds. This process whereby written words are converted into strings of phonemes must be taught explicitly. It does not develop spontaneously, and must be acquired.”
I apologize if my tone in my responses has been disrespectful. It is a sign of the passion and urgency with which I approach my work as a reading specialist. Having worked with hundreds of struggling readers in a high-poverty school over the past dozen years, I have seen first-hand how reading does not, indeed, develop “spontaneously” the way speaking does. Yes, immersion in a language-rich environment leads to speech, but the same is not true for reading. I am lucky to experience the joy that the children I work with experience when they finally crack the code and become independent readers.
I really hope everyone will watch the Dr. Weeden video I shared. It truly captures what we are up against.
Thanks again!
Harriett Janetos What is “spontaneous” for children is learning as such. For instance, children need not learn to wonder . . . they just start out that way. It’s spontaneous and, for most children, you cannot shut it off. There is lots going on there, of course, but wonder is spontaneous intelligence on-the-move and leads to all sorts of specifically-human kinds of learning, like language development (lots of theoretical work here).
If that’s the case (and it is), then what I am saying to you is that the distinction between oral as “natural” (or spontaneous) and writing as somehow not natural (or as not spontaneous) is a false and misleading distinction. Rather, these distinctions are about developmental issues and concerns that, in turn, rest on the spontaneity of human intelligence, most evident in infant and child wonder. The questions for education are about intelligent functioning, or “how we learn,” AND how our learning gets either ignored, well-directed, or badly-directed or squandered.
More remotely, however, it’s our intelligence and learning that are spontaneous and “natural” to us as human beings. Where our learning ability takes us individually or culturally . . . to merely oral and/or on further to writing/reading . . . is a complex venture of course. However, it’s not “unnatural” to learn to write, nor is it merely “spontaneous” to learn to talk.
In the work I referred to earlier, I explore how human beings are born with the structure of language as our ability to wonder, and later to formulate questions, around our ability to objectify “other,” even ourselves. And so we are extremely creative beings.
As an interesting aside, there was an article in the Sunday LA Times OP-Ed that referred to similar concerns with regard to self-reflection. Here is a relevant quote:
“Language provides us with a tool to think about ourselves like we were someone else. () Scientists call it distanced self-talk which involves using your name and ‘you’ to refer to yourself. And far from being a simple quirk of speech or a sign of narcissistic self-absorption, research shows that distanced self-talk helps people regulate negative emotions, reason wisely and perform better under stress.”
I don’t know the author’s work (see below), and I seriously doubt he knows mine. But he’s talking about the same thing as both structural and functional to human thinking. And he is speaking in terms of psychological issues, good and bad, and not philosophical. Here is his reference, and I’ll sign off: CBK
Ethan Kross, professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan and author of the book “Chatter: The Voice in our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness it.”
Harriett The more remote or underlying field of study concerns cognitional theory, the structure of language, and the question of how language (saying/expression) develops.
Below is the link to my academia.com papers. All have full citation pages; but if you are interested, see the paper: “Language and Self-Presence.” It’s an online appendix to a published book. The citations are at the end of the paper, however. Just before the citations, is an image-based rendition of what is explored in narrative form in the paper.
The fundamental background of the work, however, is rooted in both Bernard Lonergan’s major works and Emile Piscitelli’s work (both cited in the above paper) which brings Lonergan’s philosophical work into dialogue with language studies.
At any rate, apologies to Diane . . . doing comparative analyses is far beyond what blog-writing is about. CBK
https://independent.academia.edu/CatherineKing9/Drafts
Harriett: Another insulting, presumptive response, using Camins’ goals for students to accuse teachers of having not met the basics he outlines. You assume there are no commenters here who’ve read the research or have any experience teaching reading, and even that they somehow reject your preferred methods out-of-hand, as opposed to finding them an invaluable part of a multi-pronged approach.
GregB, CBK, Harriet: As a for-lang special to PreK/K kids, I like Harriet’s description of ‘Layered Literacy, teaching that is completely immersed in speaking, listening and authentic literature.’ It’s very similar to best environment for early-lang-learning, too. This is implied by Greg’s comment. However, though speaking arises ‘naturally’ from this context, reading does only for some, not for others [or sometimes just ‘not yet’].
I noticed that some kids between 4-6yo were drawn to the text and trying to do some de-coding– ‘natural’ in the sense CBK describes. As a beginning teacher I would discourage it, even cover the big-book text, as I wanted them to focus on the auditory. Got smarter; repressing the learning instinct is a turn-off. Luckily small classes made it easy to let them follow their own lead. Sheesh, a couple of them would even spot that I was, say, pronouncing “e” differently (in Sp) as I read to them. You could see the gears grinding as they pondered that this ‘other’-sounding language had its own other set of spelling rules. Nothing like that happened regarding pronunciation or syntax of the spoken language, which all assimilated instantly—no mental ‘translation’ going on.
Yes, learning to speak is natural. Learning to read is artificial and requires explicit teaching.
Ponderosa “Yes, learning to speak is natural. Learning to read is artificial and requires explicit teaching.”
You might want to think about that a little further. Children aren’t born speaking either, and they don’t learn to speak a language without being around speakers. They imitate, and then they begin to grasp, form images, and repeat as meaning accumulates and as they begin to understand more and more for themselves so that language becomes spontaneous to them.
Also, children don’t learn Chinese by being immersed in English. What’s learned, either speaking/listening or, later, reading/writing are not “artificial” unless you mean by that: having been learned. In that case, so is speaking a language. The difference between speaking and writing/reading a language is merely a matter of development, first in our long history, and now as a matter of the movement from informal teaching/learning in the home to formal teaching and learning schoolroom.
What’s natural is that human beings wonder and are learners from the get-go . . . learning AND DEVELOPMENT are natural for humans. And whether explicit or not, and whether they are deliberately involved in formal teaching/learning, they learn anyway. I should probably say “we.” CBK
Humans have been speaking for a million years. We invented reading about two seconds ago, figuratively speaking. We have evolved to pick up oral language through osmosis. We have not evolved to pick up reading through osmosis. So it’s very misleading to suggest that learning reading is akin to learning speaking. They are very different. This is a point that E.D. Hirsch emphasizes.
bethree5 I had to laugh at a memory that came to me while reading your note. First, my sister Linda was a first grade teacher in Oklahoma City for over 35 years. We used to laugh hysterically at some of her stories. Just one:
She was teaching (30 children) how to spell telephone. Before she could explain, one first grader was terribly disturbed at seeing the PH in phone.
“NO NO NO NO! Miss Rosser! It’s not PH, it’s F . . . Listen, Miss Rosser (making the sound of F). . . EFF, EFF, EFF, . . . FONE!”
She didn’t correct him right then but said, “yes, it does sound like that doesn’t it.”
She, as you say, had “Got smarter;” knowing that “repressing the learning instinct is a turn-off.”
I suppose we COULD over-generalize here; but I have often wondered how many of those little experiences, made into a “turn off” by anyone who doesn’t understand what’s important about it, are responsible for so many children falling out of love with the learning that is so natural to them. CBK
Love of learning is sustained by successes. Failing to teach decoding well in the name of preserving “love of learning” sets kids up for failure and thus guarantees hatred of learning.
Ponderosa Back in the day, (looooong time ago, but I remember it well) I was taught to “sound out the words.” Take them apart, read each piece, and put them back together. That did wonders for my ability to read. But then my sister read the Greek myths and many other stories to me and my brother (regularly), and I followed along as best I could. I NEVER did NOT love it.
I think Diane is right that it’s NOT one or the other. Rather, it’s whatever children need in the moment to become readers for life. They first have to want to read. And reading stories is a given for that. If that means, BOTH/AND, with a dose of good timing, then so be it. I think the thing we need to watch out for is those who are selling things; who think there is only one way, in this case, to teach reading; and who keep saying that the other way necessarily has snakes growing out of its head.
There are times when things demand a thorough YES or NO. But in the case of education and reading, children are complex characters, and complex characters need complex learning activities that speak to what they need to learn to read. CBK
CBK and Ponderosa: you are both so right. Of course the “ph” Q would not have come up in my tiny-tykes Span class, but similar refinements did, spotted by smarties. Using this parallel I would have congratulated him on his perspicacity, explaining that the word was borrowed from the Greek language, where that “eff” sound is spelled “ph.” This is a “success” for the one who spotted it, who is encouraged to keep learning, and gives an advanced peek into refinements for the others. Such info never seemed to confuse early learners. If they could use it, they did; otherwise it was perhaps stored away until they ran into it again later.
p.s. I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already discovered, but it encourages children to ponder the material if you don’t land on questions with a ‘you’re right/ you’re wrong’ answer, but rather help them to peer into the next level they’re stretching toward. Or any student. I’m currently studying a Span lit work w/an Argentinian teacher via zoom. When I venture an interpretation he feels is unfounded, he’ll first ask me to elaborate on my thinking, acknowledge my rationale (as far as it goes), then show me additional factors to consider.
Arthur,
The bias lies in believing that there is one way and only one way, and it is the correct way, and all others are wrong.
I remember a wise friend telling me many years ago, “in all things, moderation.” Zealotry leads us astray and causes us not to listen to others.
I recall Robert Hutchins saying many years ago that the rule of discussion must be to listen to the other fellow; he might be right.
Hello Diane Exactly that: “I remember a wise friend telling me many years ago, ‘in all things, moderation.’ Zealotry leads us astray and causes us not to listen to others.”
I also think that it’s not a choice between EITHER “the science of reading” OR . . . NO science of reading. As you and others have suggested here, teaching is a toolbox thing.
If I may, . . . of course scientific thinking CAN become distorted in any field and kind of data, and it’s a moving/developing field with any data. Also, one field can override its own rules of application and regard for the particular, as it often seems to do in education, and often at the behest of horrible political ignorance and meddling. Some scientists and many politicians, I think, find it too easy to forget that human beings’ data generate several different legitimate theoretical fields where, in teaching children or even adults, teachers have to understand comprehensive theories from many different fields as well as their pedagogical applications. (This, I think, is what we mean by “teacher wisdom.”)
However, as a METHOD applied to ANY data, science is about critical clarity of data and paying attention to the evidence. I doubt anyone here, or any teacher, wants to divorce ourselves from theory . . . even from reading theory.
I think your above point is also served by our realizing again the great difference between (a) cognitional theories, (b) reading theories and (c) pedagogical theories, on the one hand, and the specific student-teacher-relationship, on the other.
The major points are that (1) theories are generalized; (2) several different kinds of theories flow into the student-teacher relationship on a moment-to-moment basis . . . where qualified teaching is to actively keep their finger-on-the-pulse of specific students and classroom events and “toolbox” the best and most useful theories; and (3) if teachers have no knowledge of theories, or if we pooh-pooh theory as such, we are involved in a serious problem that has many implications, teacher professionalism being a major one, and opening the door to the zealotry you speak of above, being another.
Also, just because very young children can learn to read sitting next to a loving parent, regardless of their knowledge of reading or pedagogical theories, does not mean that reading and pedagogy do not need to be studied as theoretical fields or as educational research . . . which is ongoing as we speak.
My view is that too many people think that teachers are babysitters anyway . . . . to be anti-theoretical, as some teachers I know are, is to deny one’s identity with a legitimate and profoundly creative professional field . . . tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot. CBK
I recommend the entire September science of reading issue of Reading Research Quarterly, in particular Mark Seidenberg’s article “Lost in Translation: Challenges in Connecting Reading Science and Educational Practice”.
Harriett Janetos Thank you for the reference.
Because they work with children, K-12 teachers are particularly vulnerable to the still-common non-sensical idea that, somehow, teachers and their fields don’t deserve the respect that other professionals deserve . . . a loss of their essential connection with theory and critical research, especially by teachers themselves, just exacerbates the problem and even lends its support to it.
In not-so-olden times (ahem), the same problem was complemented by the fact that the field was made up of mostly women. Things, they-are-a-changin’, but not as fast as I, for one, would like. CBK
CBK, so true. I myself avoided public ed teaching—partly just because I couldn’t bear spending the expensive BA creds on ed courses w/poor reputation: chose only a couple directly related to for-lang pedagogy & eschewed the rest in favor of adv lit courses. But mostly because I perceived the college acad world as petty/ backbiting, knew I wasn’t good at following orders, figured privschs would give me more flexibility & independence [& they did].
Both in early stint at a priv hisch, & later as a free-lancing special to PreK/K’s, I’ve always been viewed/ given latitude as a professional, which encouraged me to follow ed research & better my performance [which experience got me more work]. The trade-off has always been salary/ bennies.
But it’s a bassackwards world where to make a living wage teaching, you have to become part of a cadre that is viewed patronizingly by both admins & public, w/ your teaching micromanaged, & you have to exchange basic job protections for union-negotiated daily hrs/ terms that don’t necessarily suit. Things were quite different 40-60 yrs ago: teachers I think were seen as professionals & given latitude– but that was easy enough to do in an era when they [mostly women, as now] were adjuncts to male breadwinners, with low salaries-bennies/ job insecurity to match.
6 minutes of your time. I believe this is also embedded in Paul’s blog.
I totally agree with Dr. Ruby. There are many ways to teach reading. No government should be involved with mandating a teaching methodology.
The reason it’s being legislated is because someone has to override the malign influence of education school nitwits like Hruby and Thomas. This video is sophistry. One bit: he says Reading First didn’t work. But the article he flashed showed it didn’t improve reading comprehension. Well, that’s not what it was designed to do. It’s designed to teach decoding. Comprehension is an entirely different ball of wax. Give me the science of reading over the fuzzy-headed thinking and writing of these quacks any day.
You can be a strong champion of content and substance in the curriculum without taking sides in the reading wars. I think both sides are right.
Is there any approach that you will condemn as ineffective? Or are they all good? It seems to me that there are teachers who do a very half/hearted job teaching phonics, placing their hopes on the three-cueing system and mere exposure to reading materials. I see the results: seventh graders who cannot sound out words like “Constantinople” or “Armenia”.
Great video! I think it is perfect.
Harriet, I taught students with serious reading issues too. There will always be students who need adaptations or special programs, or who may never be good readers.
I think Paul is talking in general terms. Actually, I think the SoR folks imply that everyone will be great readers with one true approach which as Diane points out is not useful.
Thanks for posting. Worth watching.
The key phrase: “There is no one best way to teach reading. Experienced teachers have a toolkit of methods, and they use whatever method works best for their students.”
But who makes the decisions in the United States? Brainless idiots like Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos, and Bill Gates.
Glad I was able to read the whole article. Well worth it. Okay, so here’s how science works. I am an English teacher, not a science teacher, but I know some science basics. There is a method to science — a scientific method, if you will: hypothesis, experiment, observation, deduction. If there were a scientific method to teaching reading, since the experimenting and observing have been ongoing for decades, even centuries, there would be some results coming in by now. There are no outcomes, though. There are no scientifically deduced data. That is because teaching reading
Is not
Science
it is
Human
.
Well put, LCT.
If one method and only one method were effective,there would be no pendulum swings from method to method. We would never abandon the one proven method.
Précisément.
They need to stop calling it the science of reading because their methods are not scientific. They can call it the pseudoscience of reading if they want. Maybe the sciencey-ism of reading. I would suggest the scientology of reading, but that one is taken.
I’ve been following your blog for years and I really admire your work and your passion. But, I’m having trouble with this post.
I moved from Canada to Los Angeles when I was 8 because my mother got a better job as a nursing administrator because she had special training. As a divorcee since I was 2 she had always been working and had little time to teach me to read. I guess that responsibility was given to my grandmother who loved reading novels but was not highly educated although she felt it was important to get a good education.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, they were going over the same math I had already learned in Toronto. The reading approach was guessing whole words.
I have a sister who is academically a year older. She has no problems sounding out words. My twin sister and I both struggle to do the same. I vaguely remember that I would have gotten more reading instruction the following year had I stayed in Toronto.
My mother spoke both English and French. My father was a civil engineer who spoke 6 or 7 languages but left when I was 2. He was Finish where learning foreign languages is/was fun and something kids did for play.
I’ve always been a reader. In fact, I read War and Peace when I was 14. I was an A student in high school. But in advanced composition in the 12th grade my teacher was dismayed to discover that I didn’t know the collating sequence for the alphabet. She required me to learn the sequence that evening. It turns out it’s a very useful thing to know!
I’ve always struggled with sounding out words that I haven’t heard before. I missed something earlier in my life. My wife (who has a PhD) sometimes finds me to be comical. She’s amazed at my creativity and often tries to figure out how I arrived at an utterance.
The big problem is I’m always trying to guess first before attempting to sound out the word. I can’t spell worth a damn. Thank goodness for Microsoft Word and all the other automatic spell checkers.
I’ve read all of Montessori’s work. She was brilliant. Learn to first write phenomes and you will suddenly discover words as you string them together. This process engages your motor neurons and reinforces the learning. Discovering words is engaging as you learn to master your environment. What a gift!
Don’t squander the special times in a child’s life when learning comes easily. Make learning fun and engaging. It’s an active process.
As Buzsaki points out in “The Brain From Inside Out”, our brain is not a passive organ that absorbs what is perceived. Action comes before perception. We are always actively engaging with the environment.
And, as Karl Friston once said “To fully understand how the brain works (or how cognitive processes work) you have to acknowledge the brain is embodied. It lives in a body. It uses a body. It gets all its sensations through a body that carries sensory … The way that we are tethered to the world depends upon movement …”
I have never been a teacher. I just wish we would give teachers the respect they do in Finland.
Jack, thanks for your comment. It sounds like your teachers did not have the full too.kits of methods. If they had, they would have quickly adjusted to teach you how to sound out words. It’s a useful skill.
Jack is a victim of educational malpractice, Diane. Many of my 7th graders are similar victims. They cannot decode or spell. Many of the “tools” teachers are using simply don’t work. We need to root out the false doctrines in our education schools. Fuzzy thinking there is harming our kids.
How come I can read Ulysses, but can’t read a Physics book, even when I sound out the words?
By the way, Paul has many blog posts and a book on the “science” of reading/reading war.
Because you lack background knowledge in physics.
@Catherine King
That “well, duh” about books in the hands of babies while cuddling is just so obvious – but it’s also when the opportunity, access, and infamous achievement gap begins.
As for TV and 2 years old – google it – American Pediatrics and dozens of other concur on the effects.
I think this is the lesson ESL/EFL teachers should take seriously. Students need both skills to know how to pronounce words and what the words mean at an early age.
You can’t stick to either method. Reading is one aspect of language fluency, and it is the matter of developing humanity. You can’t replace it with a mere score of language proficiency test.
Timely blog post by Teacher Tom: http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/leaving-our-children-illiterate-in-body.html
Thought-provoking
Everything’s a Science
Everything’s a science
Gives it Twitter cred
The “Science of Deniance”
Proves what I have said
IPhonetics
IPhonetics
Great for reading
Apathetics
Need the tweeting
iPhone addicts
Need the tweeting
Diane, I have to thank you for leading me to the writings of Arthur Camins. We can’t quote him often enough. There is definitely an “alarming dismissal of evidence” on this current thread.
From “Teaching: The Front Line in the War over Truth”
“Students can and should develop the habit of mind to search for reliable data, learn how to interpret that data to establish evidence to justify, reject, and revise conclusions. They need to develop the inclination and skills to do so across multiple disciplines. Unless that happens, we cannot hope to reverse the alarming dismissal of evidence in the public arena. This is job one for every teacher.”
I recommend this video, Literacy- The Civil Right of the 21st Century by Dr.Tracy Weeden. It begins at 21 minutes in.
Great post. As an elementary teacher and former reading interventionist, I agree with you Diane.
There are exceptions to the rules…. but in general we need to continue teaching phonics, embedded in a classroom that is filled with experiences and one that fosters a love of stories, books and reading. But at the same time we need to drop the high standards for reading achievement under the age of 8. We can do both.
We need the reading wars to carry on until the bad ideas are defeated. Bad ideas harm our kids.
Thank you, Ponderosa, for all the excellent points you’re making. I witness this harm on a daily basis. Now, more than ever, we want our doctors to be making decisions based on research. This is no less important for the reading ‘health’ of our children, especially those who aren’t lucky enough to come from a literacy-rich environment with parents who are able to fund pandemic pods and tutors. This is serious! Emily Hanford’s audio documentary At a Loss for Words explains one of the pervasive ‘bad ideas’, the 3-cueing system.
Excellent video —thanks!
Ponderosa I have copied your note below my comment (the thread is long).
Yes, learning to speak and learning to read ARE very different. However, at their core, speaking and writing are still the result of a process of human learning through which we as humans have “evolved” and have accumulated knowledge and culture . . . through that same humanly-intelligent process in context with other intelligent beings.
Yes, long period of time go by as humans have developed; but it’s still a process of development, learning, and developing some more. Cave drawings are the preliminary evidence for basic human intelligence-in-act, and they are the historical precursor to writing-reading, and are much more than, say, animals peeing on a tree. In that sense, your term “osmosis” can be read as “intelligence in act.”
Here is your note that I am responding to above:
“Humans have been speaking for a million years. We invented reading about two seconds ago, figuratively speaking. We have evolved to pick up oral language through osmosis. We have not evolved to pick up reading through osmosis. So it’s very misleading to suggest that learning reading is akin to learning speaking. They are very different. This is a point that E.D. Hirsch emphasizes.”
“We have evolved to pick up oral language through osmosis. We have not evolved to pick up reading through osmosis.”
There is no “osmosis.” It’s a matter of particularly-human conscious process. CBK
Oral language is acquired almost effortlessly, don’t you agree? Kids hear their parents, and then they start talking. That’s what I mean by “osmosis”.
Reading and writing require more effort. That’s because they’re new technologies. A million times newer than oral language. Some kids pick it up quickly; many do not. They require explicit instruction and structured practice.