Peter Greene has older children and a set of young twins. He refers to the twins as the “Board of Directors of the Curmuducation Institute.” He, the father, is the CEO.
In this post, he confesses that his twins can’t read!
They turn the pages, they look at the pictures, but they can’t read!
Of course, they are only 2 1/2, so soon they will read, he is sure.
But this gives him the opportunity to delve into the recent renewal of the perennial Reading Wars!
Phonics or Whole Word? Phonics or Whole Language? Decoding or Comprehension?
I personally find this very tiresome because the Great Debate over reading was settled in 1967 by Jeanne Chall in a book called Learning to Read: The Great Debate.
I summarized the Reading Wars in my book Left Back in 2000.
Phonics is necessary but not sufficient.
Some children learn to read without direct instruction.Some need direct instruction to learn to read.
Peter summarizes it like this:
Why is this so hard? You can’t have reading without decoding. You can’t have reading with only decoding. Reading involves a whole complex of skills, and none of those skills can be taught or acquired outside of the business of actually reading. Every reading student brings a different web of experience, knowledge, interest and processor power, which means that teachers need a toolbox filled with many tools.
I have a feeling that in about 20 years, some enterprising journalist will write a sensational book about “the reading crisis” and we will hear the same debate again, and again, and again.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My mom taught me to read before kindergarten with the 1955 book “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” she says. (I started kindergarten in 1959.) So we can see that the cries of crisis have been going on for at least 64 years.
Yes to this: “Every reading student brings a different web of experience, knowledge, interest and processor power, which means that teachers need a toolbox filled with many tools.”
One of my urban-public-schooled kids went from being slightly on the late side to just reading overnight, and I can’t even tell what teaching method made that happen — no “Why Johnny Can’t Read” lessons in my house, just a lot of actual reading. The other kid was more along a normal learning curve. Both became avid readers. A “proofreader’s eye” tends to run in my family, and they both have that. A friend who’s a high-level copy editing guru friend thinks that’s actually due to innate shape memory, in the hardwiring.
I believe the notion that there’s some magical right way or bad wrong way to teach reading is unsound, and the notion marks the proponent as either clueless or deceitful.
https://newbostonpost.com/2019/01/09/should-elementary-teachers-learn-how-to-teach-reading-or-just-wing-it/
Sandra Stotsky
We’ve known what to do for decades. Why the confusion in our education schools?
https://newbostonpost.com/2019/01/09/should-elementary-teachers-learn-how-to-teach-reading-or-just-wing-it/
Why don’t people read Chall’s book?
Phonics is necessary in learning to read. As the person gains skills though actual reading contributes immensely to improving reading and language skills. Some people acquire the reading ability without developing an interest in reading.
Since much of what is done in higher education will involve reading it is to the advantage of the person to acquire more than just the ability to read. For the quality of his life and his growth as an individual reading is vital giving him or her what a teacher or professor could not ever do. It helps in determining the quality of the democracy as they can better participate in discourse.
Amen
We are a nation at risk. Clearly, our schools and our education schools and our teachers and our parents and our grandparents are failures, for almost one hundred percent of our 2 1/2 year olds can’t read!!!! Obviously, we need standardized testing of fetuses. And value-added measurement of parents and grandparents. And Common Core for Blastocysts. And database systems to track reading improvement throughout the prenatal period. And third-trimester retention. No zygote left behind! These measures, if implemented and tied to federal funding, are certain to be every bit as effective as a) no excuses schools, b) charter schools, c) virtual schools, d) vouchers, e) VAM for teachers, f) school grading, and g) the Common Core for grades K-12, and h) current high-stakes standardized testing. I can guarantee that. Someone needs to get the message out to the Chiefs for Change and Ka-ching and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute for the Privatization of US Education and to Pearson, not Persons, and the Not-Smarter, im-Balanced Consortium and Arne “Dunkin” Duncan at the Emerson Collective for Depersonalized Education Software and Lord Coleman at the College Bored and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Computerization, Command, and Control of Everything, ASAP!
Perhaps you do not consider this a serious problem, but consider this. What happens when we have a president with a mental age of 2 1/2 who can’t read? Exactly.
Click to access CIMSE.pdf
This is about Jeanne Chall’s last book. She didn’t think more research was needed. But no one asks why so many of our education schools don’t teach prospective teachers effective strategies. Very few children anywhere should be failing a grade 3 reading test.
When we had a president who loved US History and knew it (Truman), did it make a difference to our high schools?
Why are our education schools reluctant to teach minority kids how to read?
Greene’s children are fortunate to have educated parents that provide the children with print rich environment. His toddlers are being read to, and they are already “rehearsing” reading. His children also get great care, proper nutrition and visits to doctors. His toddlers are well on their way to being readers.
Exactly. Kids come to school with vastly differing readiness, and they are on differing schedules. The one-size-fits-all Common [sic] Core [sic] crap is, therefore, entirely inappropriate. There needs to be, for those kids who aren’t so fortunate, lots of compensatory wrap-around services, and those services need to start well before school, and then there has to be a lot of compensatory SPOKEN LANGUAGE experience immersion as a prerequisite to learning to read.
What’s wrong with our National houses of worship that preach to folks weekly on doing right and still the same folks commit to not to sin–sin? Are not the failed houses of worship like the schools of education a failed institution because there are so many students that failed to learn how to read? I believe that is a fair standard of measurement for either houses of worship teaching not to sin or schools of education teaching teachers to teach reading.
While I agree with Mr. Greene that reading act is a complexity of skills, including the skill of decoding, interest and motivation (although not a skill) are a factor too.
Like sin and existence of sinners, framing the existence of students that cannot read as being failure of institution of schools of education to teach teachers to teach reading is a frame that treats an opinion as a fact.
Sometimes this same frame is presented as schools of education are not teaching the “science” of reading. By science of reading, they mean that these schools of education are committing what critics of schools of education believe is the sin of not teaching phonics sufficiently to prevent so many students from being able to learn how to read.
I believe a Greene tool box for the complex job of teaching reading contains more than just tools for teaching the skill of decoding. And, a Greene tool box needs forever a larger tool box as research provides new tools for addressing challenge of teaching reading because no one size tool fits all.
I was lucky enough to have my children go through a progressive school system, which taught phonics as a part of the literacy program that also drew on those situations that children see us using written language on a daily basis. Reading was always part of our daily activities at home. One of my children taught himself to read in kindergarten. One son missed a lot of the pre-reading activities in kindergarten because of eye issues, so it took him until third grade to take off. A combination of formalized instruction and finding books he wanted to read led to incredible growth within a few months. Across the board, meaning was always the center of instruction although for him there was a heavier emphasis on phonics initially to make up for lost time. As a retired, special education teacher, I am well aware of the importance of phonetic instruction to struggling readers, but the mechanical exercise needs the payoff of some meaning to the student. I don’t think I have ever run into a teacher who takes a strictly constructivist approach to reading, nor have I encountered a teacher who taught reading only as a decoding exercise. Both approaches are necessary to a complete literacy program. For either side to imply that the other is populated by extremists is irresponsible. Very few people are standing on those cliffs.
So here is my concern with all of this. The group promoting the “Science of Reading” wants everyone to believe that many children are dyslexic. They are creating fear and pushing legislation that is quite harmful to all children. They have tabloid media like “Edweek” promoting their agenda and character assassinate anyone who tries to disagree with them.
Anyone who counters their push, is quickly put down as well as attacked.
I like what Peter has stated, but I feel that the other side of this war has never said kids don’t need phonics. But when my 5th grader is forced to do 30 minutes of a phonics program that all 5th graders are being forced to do and she HATES it, problem.
And more importantly, while Peter’s children aren’t reading, they see themselves as readers. The SOR/dyslexic group want all children screened and tested in kindergarten. When we lived in Colorado, my 6 year old daughter would have been put on the READ act had I allowed it. It requires extensive phonics. . .drill and kill. . . she simply wasn’t ready and now I can’t keep up with her need for books.
Kids aren’t allowed to see themselves as readers anymore. Here are a few blogs that cover the issue.
https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2019/12/02/back-to-the-future-of-reading-instruction-1990s-edition/?fbclid=IwAR2Lx9t2XLwVQ5TCeAzXMStBeKm-gzcU4QqIMhTbQTA1upFzHQOq3GRKwFM
Paul is coming out with a new book and I can’t wait. “How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care”
We do have a literacy problem, but it’s not because teachers don’t know how to teach phonics. Not to mention there are quite a few people that aren’t actually teachers in the classroom. It’s because policy makers are forcing literacy policy on our schools that create poor readers.
This is how we got to teach.
But not anymore.
So. . . could the renewed push be for 2 reasons
1. Phonics is much easier to implement via computer.
2. And is it a way to privatize the higher education
“I have a feeling that in about 20 years, some enterprising journalist will write a sensational book about “the reading crisis” and we will hear the same debate again, and again, and again.”
Maybe not. Maybe the US will become as relaxed as many other countries about the technical aspects of education, such as reading and counting, and will realize, a happy, well motivated 6-7 year old will demand to learn these tools without the push and politics of various adult groups.
I am looking for information and data on the third grade reading laws like the one in Florida and now in Michigan. What is the best source for this? I’m interested in both sides too. BTW, my 35 year old’s kindergarten teacher told me a long time ago that teachers used all different methods to teach reading. It is nothing new. Why does this go on and on?
” BTW, my 35 year old’s kindergarten teacher told me a long time ago that teachers used all different methods to teach reading. It is nothing new. Why does this go on and on?”
Exactly.