In the past few months, there have been a number of articles about “the science of reading,” all touting the importance of phonics. I don’t know that there is a “science of mathematics” or a “science of history,” or a science of teaching any other subject. Although I have a long record in support of teaching phonics, I have long recognized that many children read without the help of phonics, many learn by being read to by their parents, many start reading because the grown ups in their lives make it important to them.
Nancy Bailey points out a central problem with the “science of reading.” The disappearance of libraries and librarians. The ed-tech industry has jumped on the “science of reading” bandwagon because it believes that a computer can teach sounds and symbols as well as a human teacher, maybe better, through repetitive exercises.
Nancy, as usual, says “hold on” and throws some common sense and experience into the discussion.
She writes:
The loss of libraries and qualified librarians in the poorest schools has reached a critical mass. Yet those who promote a Science of Reading (SoR), often supporting online reading programs, never mention the loss of school libraries or qualified librarians.
Ignoring the importance of school libraries and certified librarians delegitimizes any SoR. Children need books, reading material, and real librarians in public schools. If reading instruction doesn’t lead to reading and learning from books, what’s the point? Why should children care about decoding words if there’s no school library where they can browse and choose reading material that matters?
How do school districts prioritize reading when they shutter the only access some students have to books? Who will assist students when qualified school librarians are dismissed?
Across the country, as noted below, public school districts have chaotically closed school libraries and fired librarians. They have done this despite the fact that school libraries and qualified librarians are proven positive factors in raising reading scores in children.
When recent NAEP scores appeared low, no one questioned how the loss of school libraries and librarians in America’s poorest schools could have accounted for lower scores. Instead, they obsessed over rising scores in Mississippi, likely due to holding third graders back.
The SoR fans criticize teachers, university education schools, and reading programs. Most are not classroom teachers and they appear to be taking children down a path towards all-tech reading programs.
Unlike the abundance of research showing the benefit of libraries and librarians, there’s no proven research that online reading programs will help children read better, especially if they have a reading disability.
The Research
We’ve known for years, that schools with quality school libraries and school librarians have students who obtain better test scores. Numerous research studies support the importance of libraries and librarians….
A Few of the Many Places that Have Lost School Libraries and Librarians:
New York City: A 2015 Education Week report, “Number of Libraries Dwindles in N.Y.C. Schools” notes that the number of N.Y.C. school libraries plummeted from nearly 1,500 in 2005 to fewer than 700 in 2014. The biggest drops happened in the three years before this time. Michael Bloomberg was mayor. Libraries were severely understaffed.
Philadelphia: This city has seen a drastic reduction of school libraries. The situation is dire. The Philadelphia Enquirer 2020 report, “You Should Be Outraged by the State of Philly Public School Libraries,” shows that, like other school districts, Philadelphia has had to resort to raising funds through donations to save its school libraries. Many schools have no library.
Michigan: Michigan has a known literacy crisis, but policymakers don’t put two-and-two together. Between 2000 and 2016, Michigan saw a 73% decline in school librarians. In 2019, they began retaining third graders with reading difficulties threatening children to “learn or else,” a reform with research stacked against it. Schools turned libraries into media centers and makerspaces. None of this is working out well.
California: California is one of the worst states for a lack of school libraries and qualified librarians. (Ahlfeld). In 2013-14, 4,273 California schools completed a survey representing 43 percent of schools. Of those responding to the survey, 84 percent have a place designated as the library, although staffing, collections, and programs range from exemplary to substandard. Sixteen percent of the schools didn’t have a library. Librarians were mostly found in high schools. Few schools in California have a certified school librarian. Some schools only open the library one day a week. Many elementary schools don’t have library services.
Oakland: In Oakland they’ve lost libraries, or they exist but they have old, outdated books. Signs on the wall tell students they are not allowed to check out books, and 30% of the original 80 school libraries have closed. Fourteen of the 18 high school libraries are gone. Sometimes the PTA provides volunteers for students to check out books.
Virginia: Some states permit schools to staff school libraries with volunteers, a common way to replace certified librarians. Teachers might help students check out books, or they have books for students to check out in their classrooms. Virginia avoided school library chaos in 2018 when the Virginia Association of School Librarians and the Virginia Library Association lobbied the state senate’s education committee helping to narrowly defeat a bill that would have removed regulations for qualified librarians at the middle and high school level. The Virginia House Education Committee defeated Senate Bill 261 in a 12-10 vote.
Chicago: In 2013, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel had the press take a picture of him in a school library discussing a funding increase to the school. The librarian had just lost their job! At that time it was reported that Chicago had 200 schools without a library, or the libraries were staffed by volunteers. The situation is still dire The recent teachers strike brought necessary change, but librarians worry they weren’t on the receiving end. About 80% of the 514 district-run schools are still without a librarian. There are only 108 full-time working librarians in the district, down from 454 librarians in the 2012–2013 school year, the year of the last Chicago teachers strike. But the recent strike did bring needed recognition to loss of school librarians and school libraries.
Arizona: Like so many places, Arizona has children who face poverty and don’t have access to reading material and literacy opportunities. But with only 140 certified school librarians, 57 book titles available for 100 students, and an average library budget of $960, Arizona school libraries are treading water.
New Jersey: In 2012, officials in New Jersey pondered whether librarians were necessary to help students when all students had to do was look up information online. But librarians are still critical to student success in elementary, middle, and high schools. In 2016, they reported a 20% drop in the number of school library media specialists or teacher-librarians in the state since 2007-2008. The New Jersey Library Association began a campaign Unlock Student Potential to address this serious problem. If you are concerned about the state of school libraries and librarians, this provides reports about the problems facing New Jersey.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools: In 2015, The Charlotte Observer published “Are School Librarians Going Way of the Milkman?” by Ann Doss Helms over concern about the loss of librarians and media specialists. School administrators used the excuse that teachers could offer books in their classrooms and get students library cards to the public library. This weakens the school structure, and paves the way to school privatization.
Denver: As more students entered the Denver school system, in 2019, they saw a 60% drop in their school librarians despite a previous 2012 study showing that Schools that either maintained or gained an endorsed librarian between 2005 and 2011 tended to have more students scoring advanced in reading in 2011 and to have increased their performance more than schools that either lost their librarians or never had one. How could they ignore what worked?
Florida: In 2015, The Florida Times-Union reported “Media specialists (librarians) almost endangered species in Duval schools.”Librarians are called media specialists there, but 110 media specialists had dropped to 70, leaving only 68 librarians in elementary schools, one at a high school, and one left at a middle school. In 2018, the number of librarians lost included 73 in Duval County, 206 in Dade County, 78 positions in Pasco County, and 47 librarians lost in Polk County (Sparks & Harwin).
Houston: The loss of school librarians began around 2008-2009 school year and got so bad many put bumper stickers that said “Houston We Have a Librarian Problem.” Houston started with 168 librarians. By 2013, it had dropped to 97 serving 282 K-12 schools. In 2019, the Houston Chronicle told about children coming home without books to read in their backpacks. Their 320 student school didn’t have a well-stocked library or full-time librarian.
Ohio: In 2015, it was reported that Ohio had lost more than 700 librarian positions over a decade. In that same year, the School Library Journal posted this report, “OH Department of Education Will Vote to Purge School Librarian Requirement.”
It appears that an emphasis on decoding, without addressing the loss of school libraries and qualified librarians, is intentionally incomplete for a reason. We know the importance of a school library and qualified librarians to a well-functioning school. Blaming teachers and their education schools for poor student reading scores, while ignoring this loss, indicates that forces are at work to end public education and replace teachers with screens. The SoR focus looks to be about this, and should be seen for it’s real agenda.
Nancy then offers a list of sources to prove her claim that libraries in schools are crucial for cultivating a love of reading. Access to books matters.
There is a difference between reading and literacy. Reading can be low-level or it can be a tool for gaining knowledge and knowing how to absorb it.
Open her post and read it.
She makes her case.
The powers that be seem to think that all librarians do is check out books and that libraries are a waste of resources when everything they have can be accessed online. Unfortunately, too many ordinary folks think the same thing.
and lately many seem to feel the same way about teaching
Go Nancy! I would add that standards-based education has robbed the students of the pilgrimage to the stacks, where deep in the recesses of the books, a feeling of awe gives the student a feeling of what it means to carry forward the learning of the ages. Our public school library is already dramatically depleted of available monographs due to decades of underfunding and a lack of emphasis on individual reading.
The problem of standards-based education is that the ideas associated with learning are to diverse to summarize in statements. When we think that we can prescribe our way to success, we rob the student of the appreciation of the breadth of human knowledge and understanding.
Roy,
I’m with you on the risks of narrowing education to prescribes bullet points. Some of my happiest hours in school and college were spent browsing open library shelves and discovering unknown treats.
I got poorer grades than many of my fellows because I was I the library reading what I wanted to.
My first trip into a big university library left me feeling like a monk in a cathedral, like a birder watching a fallout.
Loved the stacks at Mizzou. Three stories plus the basement of a block square library. One can get joyfully lost in them.
The district in which I teach has drastically culled their book collections so that shelves are half empty or worse. They say they do it because if the students see stuffed shelves, they’re “overwhelmed” and won’t choose a book at all. I don’t believe that for a minute, but what do I know? I’m just a teacher.
You should be asking what the criteria was – I bet there was one related to age of the book, how often it had been checked out, mis-information and outdated representations, if it was falling apart. There are a lot of ways to guide what is de-selected – and usually there are good reasons. Also research does hold up that fewer, higher quality items including high interest materials means better engagement with a collection – fewer books just may equal higher circulation rates – you should ask if circulation increased.
This fake debate is manufactured by the same vandals that seek to privatize our schools. Nobody disputes that students need to be able to apply the sound-graphemic system in order to read. However, most students do not need a computer program in order to do this. Libraries and librarians are essential in a well functioning school. Reading including recreational reading contribute to making students life long readers and learners.
The greedy oligarchs are attempting to impose computer driven instruction with an ultimate goal of replacing human teachers with computers. These companies backed by billionaires are attempting to normalize the delivery of instruction by machine. It is an attempt to shift the paradigm of what it means to learn. There is no evidence to support this radical notion. It is simply the will of Silicon Valley and its deep pockets. It is a way to privatize our schools from the inside out. Like other forms of privatization, they are starting with poor, minority schools as targets. One they normalize computer instruction there, they will expand to other markets.
Parents should intervene in this attempt to hijack legitimate instruction. Our young people should not be guinea pigs in order to make more money for Silicon Valley. Parents that want their children to be safe and have privacy rights should refuse to allow their children to participate. Nobody knows the impact of too much screen time on developing eyes and brains. Some current research points to an increase in depression among teenagers that spend too much time in front of a screen.https://abcnews.go.com/Health/social-media-screen-time-linked-depression-teens-study/story?id=64399137
But when parents refuse to allow their children to participate, parents get numerous (and badgering) phone calls from the school AND our children pay the price. Ask me….I’ve had it happen with the 1:1 IPad program at our MS. It’s one of the reasons that we put child #2 into private school. Common Core Crap delivered via an IPad is still crap.Once the IPad program started, the librarian was repurposed to another position and the library was only used if a teacher had a free period
Another Bailey post focused on the administrators’ convention in San Diego. It was a panoply of nothing but tech products that presumably cure all ills. The tech moguls are trying to brain wash administrators that then become lion tamers that crack the whip on the teachers. Behavioral tech products cannot provide students with a rich, thought provoking, comprehensive education. That is what teachers and libraries do!
The iPad scandal in Los Angeles coincided with the loss of librarians. It was no accident, the tech companies involved in the FBI-investigated purchasing scandal clearly wanted to monetize data. They did not care that e-books on iPads do not promote the deep learning of reading print books in a library.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking deeply sobers us again.
I love this Nancy Bailey post.
“It is a way to privatize our schools from the inside out.”
Exactly! Very subtle and subversive. And unfortunately, so many educators (I can’t call those who uncritically accept these incursions teachers) believe in the technological fix (fix as in a heroin addict’s fix).
fake debate. exactly
Here’s an example of the insanity of the library situation in Oakland Unified. Taxpayers pass Measure G; it’s supposed to fund libraries/librarians. There wasn’t enough to fund librarians for each school site (some already had librarians/library clerks, often paid for through the PTA), so for purposes of “equity” the district allocated each site an equal chunk of money. Some sites could finally upgrade some of their books. But our school (high needs, of course) got nothing. Why? We already have books, but now the kids can’t check them out because they have no library clerk and they cut the position for next year. Thirsty for knowledge, surrounded by water, but not a drop to drink. It’s awful.
It’s a bureaucratic downward spiral. We need laws on the books that require libraries and librarians in each school building. Why should poor students always get separate and unequal treatment?
Outrageous!
Horrific
Thank you, Diane. I need to add that last night I was contacted by two Decoding Dyslexia administrators. Decoding Dyslexia parent groups have become prominent around the country, and most believe in a Science of Reading and highlight phonics to correct reading disabilities like dyslexia.
The administrator wanted me to know they do not promote any tech programs over other tech programs. Special emphasis was made pertaining to Waterford UpStart, an online preschool program. They did not specifically mention Amplify.
Thank you, Nancy. I recommend you to all!
Hi Diane, My name is Clarice Jackson and I am the President of Decoding Dyslexia NE. I would like you to remove the Decoding Dyslexia claim from this piece as Nancy did on her original blog after we talked. You have shared her version prior to editing. We have over 50 plus states and some states have unique situations but our overall mission is not to promote any program as the end all be all for students who struggle with dyslexia. I can tell you I DO NOT agree and have advocated in opposition to computers teaching literacy to students here in my local school district and the youth detention centers. A blanket generalization of a national group can be dangerous and harmful and I know Nancy has retracted that piece from her original article and in good faith I am asking you to do the same. Thank you and God bless
A minority of students suffer from dyslexia. We should not treat all students as though they have it. Students have learned to read for generations without the help of technology. The ultimate goal of reading, as you have mentioned repeatedly, is understanding or comprehension. That is why we need professional teachers making the decisions, not profit seeking tech companies.
retired teacher, so agree.
“I don’t know that there is a “science of mathematics” or a “science of history,” or a science of teaching any other subject.”
Exactly! That is because teaching is not a science. It is an art. Ya know 1/2 of the Arts and Sciences realm and which should be considered as co-equal in mankind’s desire and struggle to know and understand the world.
The attempt by educators (and I by that term I don’t necessarily include all teachers, big difference) to hijack scientific terminology in attempts to describe and improve the teaching and learning process can only result in nonsense since teaching and learning is far and above of the art realm and not the scientific realm. The result is a mishmash of pseudo-scientific nonsense or noise that distracts from what actually needs to be done in the classroom to improve the teaching and learning process.
A secondary result, but just as misguided, specious and unjustifiable, of the current pseudo-scientific irrationality is the attempt to “medicalize” the teaching and learning process. an attempt that also includes trying to garner the prestige of the medical field onto the teaching and learning process, an ersatz prestige that in the end belittles the teaching and learning process. Presumed standards against which one supposedly “measures” the deficiencies in learning of each and every student and then proposes to “fix” those invalid, misleading and fallacious diagnoses. Insanity thy name is modern public American education.
That desire and attempt to scientize and medicalize through a numerology-the standards and testing malpractice regime, has led us to this point in time wherein the teaching and learning process has been almost completely bastardized and many harms are done to every student everyday. I pity the students who are subjected to this invalid, ludicrous and unjust malpractice regime. Where is our empathy, understanding and compassion for the most innocent, the children of society?
“Medicalize.” Duane, reminds me that neuroscience is talked about a lot in reference to reading. Always difficult to understand but sounds impressive.
And that “impressive sounding” talk is just that. It lacks substance. Medicalize is a concept that I’m trying to develop as a critique of current education malpractices such as those you describe in your writings about teaching reading. The neuroscience that is used is simplified and invalidly used to justify “selling product”. So much of what is being done in education today are rife with those types of simplifications without to validity concerns.
And so many, unfortunately too many teachers, are bamboozled by the bullshit. There is no doubt in my mind that those many are minimally scientifically literate.
correction: without paying attention to validity concerns.
The Internet Education Tech industry can’t make any money if libraries exist because old fashioned public libraries offer books that can be checked out read for FREE.
To make money, the Internet Education Tech Industry has to have customers that pay ta fee as some customers pay for something like HBO.
Those pesky FREE public libraries are getting in the way of launching a new profitable industry through the internet.
It isn’t easy for a paid-for service to compete with one that is free and has been free for centuries. So, get rid of the old free one and replace it with a profitable one where people have to pay to read and if they can’t afford to pay, too bad so thinks the Tech CEOs who were born with green-greedy blood running through their bodies.
Yes. Also one teacher told me a book company comes in to sell books even though they don’t have much of a library left.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Nancy, for this defense of libraries and librarians.
What’s happened to school libraries (and theatres and art supply closets and music rooms) in the age of deform is revolting.
I can’t imagine my own childhood without my beloved school and public libraries!!!! So, so, so important, that wandering among the books, pulling off the shelves these random, wonderful discoveries!!! The deformers just don’t grok the importance, the value of connecting with actual, physical books.
In my recent school, the “library” was a “media room” with dumb terminal computers that were almost exclusively used for taking tests. There was no librarian. There were three small shelves with books that had been donated by parents–random junk that the adults had read (Dan Brown, James Patterson, The Secret, 90 Days to Your Perfect Weight) or had inherited from THEIR parents (a 1948 book on business management; a 1963 photobook on The Wonders of Pompeii; a yellowed, disintegrating 1920s collection of the works of Longfellow). Basically, the only books we had in this “library” were the ones that a few parents were going to throw out anyway. Weirdly, one of the books in this random collection of discards was Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, the content of which, had anyone in the administration been aware of this, would have gotten it banned.
There are two issues addressed in this posting: the importance of libraries and the teaching of phonics.
There is no direct connections between learning to read and the closing of libraries. How can going to a library make someone a reader? You are missing a few steps. Libraries are important for recreational reading especially for adults.
“In U.S., Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019” Gallup Poll “Visiting the library remains the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far.” 1/24/2020 by Justin McCarthy
Children learn to read from a certified reading teacher who has a background in child psychology, philosophy of education and a background in the teaching of reading from experts in the field such as Mary Clay, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Frank Smith and many others.
Second issue which has been addressed numerous times and again I will rebut. Phonics has many short comings:
-Phonics only helps if the words are already in one’s hearing vocabulary.
– Every rule is broken at some time; e.g., I no sooner tell the children, “When there is only one vowel in the word and come between two consonants the vowel is usually short.” The next word invariably will be kind, find, mind, wild, or mild.
– Phonics is a skill; readers occasionally use skills but constantly need to use strategies. For the emergent reader only the initial letter sound is needed.
– With so many varied speech patterns around the county, how can phonics be the primary approach to reading? There is a single spelling across dialects that pronounce words very differently.
– “And when the rules being taught do not match the learner’s own dialect, it is that much more confusing and that much harder to learn. Yet another barrier for far too many children! “
– How about the children with an auditory discrimination problem? They can not learn via phonics. Extra help in phonic lessons is a waste of time.
-There is no carry over. My grandchildren reinforced the fact that there was no carry over from what they learned in the structured phonetic approach to their reading.
A teacher needs to relate everything a student learns to the child. A teacher begins with the child’s words. A computer cannot make that connection. The computer approach is a test mode approach.
“Intensive Decoding Instruction Does Not Contribute to Reading Comprehension.” states Stephen Krashen
“Phonics instruction should never dominate reading instruction. At least half the time devoted to reading should be spent reading connected text -stories, poems, plays, trade books etc. N o more than 25% (and possibly less) of the time should be spent on phonics instruction. Teach only the rules that are frequently used. Children should read some text daily, preferably a complete story, with phonics instruction integrated into the text reading.” Steven Stahl, The Reading Teacher April 1992
I, too, maintain that reading is more than just blending- sounding out words. It is a thinking process, drawing on background information to construct new meaning. It involves an interaction between what we already know and the author’s ideas. Phonics only gives an approximate pronunciation.
Reading, constructing meaning, is acquired by engaging in the three-prong cueing system: graphophonics, semantics, and syntax. It is the teaching of strategies along with skills. Using literature which students can relate to and appeals to them is very important. They can’t relate to contrived stories presented in a phonic based program.
I like much of what you say, but there’s research about the importance of school libraries and librarians to student achievement. I’ve provided the links below.
“We’ve known for years, that schools with quality school libraries and school librarians have students who obtain better test scores. Numerous research studies support the importance of libraries and librarians. You can find some of that research in the following links.”
https://antiochlis.libguides.com/schlibcert/research
https://www.lrs.org/data-tools/school-libraries/impact-studies/
Nancy, I am not refuting the importance of libraries in school and public libraries. We have a worn path from here to our public library. We took our grandchildren to their public library daily from the time they were in a stroller – not yet walking- until they went to school.
Plus, the Kindle is filled with books from the public library. I agree they are crucial to the community and school. However, they are not the place where reading is taught or caught. They are great for laying the foundation for toddlers on up for learning.
Nancy, the most fabulous public library is where we lived for nine years.
http://maryidefalco.com/reading%20site%20reconnected/3._Achievement_Gap.html
Scroll down on the right and to see all it offers to the community.
Mary, thanks for the library link. Very nice.
I used to drive out of my way for a public library story hour when my daughter was very young. The librarian read so beautifully and embellished the picture books with enjoyable props, music, and drama. I never saw a child who wasn’t captivated!
How can going to a library make someone a reader?
I went to libraries when I was still a toddler. All those wonders in all those books was one of the things that made me WANT to become a reader. So important!!!
I agree with you, Bob. Going to the library made me a voracious reader. So many books, so little time!
Against the odds of dyslexia, I learned to read and fell in love with libraries and bookstores. To this day, no matter how much I use my computer and spend time on the Internet, I do not love them and never will.
But I will always love visiting libraries and bookstores.
If the Internet died tomorrow, I would not grieve long. Instead, I’d be on my way to the nearest library and/or bookstore to do what I used to do before the Internet came along to hijack life and civilization.
Phonics alone would be a disaster. But who does that? Again, this seems to me a fake debate. Those on the extreme right who advocate for an all-phonics approach with beginning readers are just kooks, clueless fruitcakes.
My ode to the Indiana University Library, which was open to all citizens of the state: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-limits-of-learning/
I was also very, very grateful for my school library and for the Carnegie public library in Bloomington, Indiana.
Bob, I still enjoy spending time at my nearby college library or any library for that matter.
Nancy, My colleague just shared this post via Twitter, retweeted by Diane Ravitch. Thank you for referencing the work in New Jersey. We have formed a Task Force between the NJ Library Association and the NJ Association of School Librarians. I am one of the Co-Chairs. This is an equity issue, and we are hearing from many academic librarians who report college students entering universities grossly unprepared because of the lack of school library services in high school. There are 2 legislation bills that we hope will pass that will ensure a school librarian in every school in New Jersey. Thank you for raising awareness. I would love to talk to you further if you are looking for other article opportunities.
Sure. My contact info. is on my blog under About.
Wonderful piece, Nancy! Thank you for this defense of libraries and librarians!
Thank you Nancy Bailey! We librarians who have be pressured out of our jobs and know that our former busy school libraries are now locked have been simmering reading all these articles about how children learn to read – with the glaring omission of school libraries. This is another example of the war on children living in poverty in this country because when we see a discrepancy between schools with beautiful well stocked libraries staffed with certified librarian(s) we can be sure that the supported libraries are in wealthier communities and the unused former libraries are in schools like my former school on the South Side of Chicago. For shame – this goes especially to Mayors Bloomberg and Emanuel.
Many if not all public libraries offer literacy programs for children and adults. For instance, public libraries might offer storytelling time for preschoolers.
Humans are social creatures by nature and social media through the internet is robbing too many children and adults of face-to-face social contact that is a much better way to introduce children to reading and books than alone-time at home in front of a computer screen.
Studies show that “face-to-face contact trumps (no pun intended – it’s too bad that this word “trump” was hijacked by the grandfather of the Frankesteing-Dracula Trumpelstiltskin living in the White House pretending to be a world leader) Facebook, phone, and emails for lowering depression.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201510/face-face-social-contact-reduces-risk-depression
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151005080109.htm
What are the health benefits of being social?
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321019
And the BBC reports, “Screen time ‘may harm toddlers’
“Letting a toddler spend lots of time using screens may delay their development of skills such as language and sociability, according to a large Canadian study.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47026834
Thanks for all the interesting links, Lloyd!
Lloyd, you stated, “ Many if not all public libraries offer literacy programs for children and adults. For instance, public libraries might offer storytelling time for preschoolers.”
Lloyd, is it storytelling time or story time -reading of literature to the children? Storytelling is rare but story time – reading good literature to the children is almost a given here on LI. Many libraries offer far more than just story time. The libraries we have been blessed with have, offer countless programs for all ages. Check it out this one: https://www.mcplibrary.org The link on my web site is more detailed with numerous hands-on centers and a large fenced-in outdoor nature center. There are countless other libraries around us but the one I depicted is the one our grandchildren and we lived in daily until they went off to school.
Schools on the LI have a well supply of literature books to use as a teaching tool. They are not dependent on libraries for textbooks. That is not their purpose. Libraries with their librarians support research and recreational reading. Yes, they also have a computer center.
What concerns me is that our great literature books, classics, books written by great children’s authors and illustrated by renowned artists are being replaced by Pearson’s book! The art work and lay out of the Pearson’s books are atrocious! Bubble-headed characters flying around along with the text. Sure they have a shiny new look but the artistic look is not there. Is Pearson bribing the librarians to purchase their books?
As regards computers, they have their place. For children who do not have access to a public library they have the Electronic UTube stories. There are sound affect plus the readers read with great animation – lots of expression and changes of voice.
For the teacher it can serve as a listening center for a group of children while the teacher is working with another group. No way can a computer replace the teacher. As stated previously, a computer cannot develop meaningful background; relate the story to the students; and help them apply. Students come from many varied backgrounds and personalities. What ever we teach our students has to be meaningful to them otherwise it is a waste of time.
I agree whole heartedly that technology is robbing our children of socialization. Ugh! I am so tempted to have a basket at the door to deposit tech equipment. Nothing is more repulsive than to see a group of kids and teenagers sitting side-by-side on their iphone.
Lloyd, you mentioned toddlers spending lots of time on the screen could affect their developmental skills. I agree, spending too much time could have detrimental affects on the children. However, there is nothing like a screen to save a mother’s anxiety. When a mother or caretaker have a task to perform, need to leave the room …it is very reassuring that their charges are in good hands- in their high chair with a screen in their hands. In a split second a toddler can encounter so much harm. Of course the time with the screen must be limited.
I’m still reading “Slaying Goliath”. Reached page 102 last night.
It has been growing in me for some time (like for years) that we are at WAR with the deformers that Diane reveals that in her book.
The Deformers are the enemy of teachers, parents, and children. That makes them the enemies of humanity. They might as well be an alien race from another planet determined to destroy us all. The Invasion of the Deformers from dying Planet X.
Pearson and all the other Deformers must be defeated or I think they will end our civilization as we know it and turn this world into a horrid dystopian enivornment something like “Mad Max”.
Hopefully, we can defeat the Deformers at the ballot box and through the courts. if not in the election, then in the next one and several others after that.
This is ridiculous. K-3 students spend hours and hours each week with classroom teachers learning reading. K-3 students, if lucky, spend 45mins a week with a librarian. I love libraries and I loved being in them as a child. Libraries are important and so are librarians. I visit my local library at least once a week. However, librarians are not teaching reading. Nor should they be teaching reading.
Please keep focused on the fact that 60% of American students do not learn to read proficiently – ever. They graduate high school without the requisite reading skills for life. And we need to change this and in order to change this horrible statistic, we need to look at our instruction and teacher training. We need to acknowledge that scientific research (neuro science) tells us how brains learn to read and what needs to happen to make sure that all kids learn to read.
And that starts with decoding / phonics based instruction. It doesn’t start with blaming devices or blaming the loss of libraries. We’ve had stagnant reading scores for decades – since the 70’s.
Yes, creating meaning is important – of course it is important! It is the objective of reading! But if a kid cannot decode word – cannot sound out letters and blended sounds – a kid cannot create meaning.
For some kids, as you say, explicit and systematic instruction of phonics is not necessary. But for the last three decades, 60 percent of children don’t learn how to read. And so it seems that this kind of explicit and systematic phonics instruction IS required and necessary for the majority.
So why not try it? Try while supporting all kids and librarians and libraries. We can support all those thing simultaneously.
Kelly, I provided two links in my post with many citations showing the importance of libraries and librarians to student progress in reading.
For the record, I do not reject phonics for students with dyslexia or reading disabilities, on the contrary, I used several phonics programs when I was teaching. Every few years my school district put us through phonics training for a new program. They weren’t miracle programs, but I’m sure they were helpful to some children.
Many of these programs rely on scripts and are easily transitioned to online. But I don’t believe, nor have I seen proof, that these programs will be miracle programs either.
My biggest problem teaching? Motivation. Getting children to want to actually READ, and learning how to understand what they were reading. That’s where the library and librarian come in.
The Science of Reading enthusiasts should look more broadly at these outside variables that students miss. Phonics is only a part of the whole and a small part for some children.
Nancy, we usually have a meeting of minds but not when it comes to supporting the phonetic approach to reading even for the dyslexia and other disabled readers. The Reading Recovery is especially helpful to the dyslexia and all those with reading disabilities of one kind or another. Plus it involves the students personally and makes reading not only interesting but fun. After all who doesn’t have fun doing something they are successful in and relates to themselves.
Phonetic approach is a skill guided by rules that are broken. The stories broadly relate to the age bracket but not to the individuals’ pleasure and delights. The contrived, controlled stories are boring and a great incentive for students give up, developed a poor self-image and a defeatist attitude.
Phonics is only one aspect of a successful three-pronged, interactive, contextualized reading approach to reading.
Background knowledge is crucial in comprehended. Even when encountering new words which students do not understand, the context will help them with meaning. The three-pronged cueing system goes beyond just the phonics. It utilized semantics, syntax, along with graphophonics. Constructivists focus is on supporting active learners engaging all the senses, interacting with the text and responding to the text. A phonetic approach emphasizes that meaning is found in the text- not in the interaction with the students’ experience and background.
Marie Clay believed in teaching to a child’s strengths, not to their weaknesses, viz, connecting their experiences and background to the text. She initiated the conversational tone with emergent readers while placing new vocabulary in their ear as she did her “Picture Walks.”
The phonetic approach introduces text with the drill of sounds, letters, and then repeat and repeat until the text is practically memorized – that is not reading.
Marie Clay’s approach with her Reading Recovery, believed in giving all the support a child needs so he/she will not make a mistake. She utilized reasoning skills along with utilizing all the senses. A feeling of success and a challenge that can be met, hands on, and modeling were all very important to Marie Clay. The phonetic approach is indifferent to the affective realm, to the child’s feelings – a form of child abuse.
Anyone who has researched, taught or observed in a Reading Recovery classroom knows that it is a solid intervention program. unlike any program anchored in the phonetic approach. Reading Recovery integrates phonics into the reading program and keeps it in balance with the other cues. Reading Recovery is designed to compliment the regular classroom’s literacy program so that the At Risk student can learn to work at the average level of their classmates. Reading Recovery with one-to-one and Literacy Collaborative and the Arkansas Literacy Intervention Program for group instruction for emergent readers is most successful. Students need guidance and encouragement in making connections, predicting, and reading to verify. Students need to be active learners such as constantly bridging prior experience to the text being read.
No program is going to bring all children – learning disabled, those with emotional and physical problems- on par with the students who were ahead before they began for obvious reasons. Some people will never be able to run a 4-min. mile or to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. However, educators must create an environment that is based upon every child’s instructional level, where children feel safe enough to learn with all the mistakes that are part of learning, where they can achieve and feel good about themselves. This will not happen to children who, for a variety of reasons, are competing against more advance peers. Besides developers of the Common Core, who says we all have to be Beethovens anyway?
Researchers have emphasized: what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information. As stated before, Constructivists encourage students to interact with the text by activating prior knowledge, and throughout the text, question, predict, and analyze as they read. If, for example, a student has no background with the new concepts being developed, the background must first be developed via discussion, photos, video or a class trip. The phonetic approach does not develop background.
Comprehension occurs when readers integrate the text and prior knowledge. Linking is a crucial tool. It helps students understand, remember as well as retrieve. When a child can predict, he/she is already reading for meaning but the material that the child is reading must be meaningful to the reader.
When a child is reading for meaning, he/she does not need to look at each word much less at every letter in a word. Skills in isolation are meaningless; skills need to be contextualize in a meaningful context.
Peace and Happy International Woman’s Day
“When a child is reading for meaning, he/she does not need to look at each word much less at every letter in a word. Skills in isolation are meaningless; skills need to be contextualize in a meaningful context.”
As a severely dyslexic child at age seven, before they knew what it was, my mother was told by early Deformers that were public school administrators in the 1950s, that I would never learn to read or write.
Depressed and desperate, my mother turned to my 1st-grade teacher (my second year in her 1st-grade class) for advice. What that teacher told my mother to do at home had nothing to do with phonics.
After being a public school teacher for thirty years, I know for a fact that having phonics forced on me as that child would have ended my ability to learn to read or write forever just like it did to my older brother who died at 64 illiterate. Without meaningful context from the story, learning to read would have been torture and boring.
A few years later, I was an avid reader plowing through books from the local and school libraries.
According to a 2019 Pew study, 27 percent of American adults had not read a book in the preceding year. This is up from 19 percent in 2011.
It’s interesting that that number is close to the percentage of hardcore support (about 33 percent) for IQ45, who is himself a nonreader.
Ms. O’Keefe, I agree with you on one point: “librarians are not teaching reading. Nor should they be teaching reading. I do not agree with you on your approach to teaching reading.
I know it is difficult to step out of your frame of mind and try an understand another approach. Just recently I listed all the problems with the phonetic approach.
My grandchildren assure me that the Constructivists approach is the right approach. I was amazed at my seven-year-old grandson as he read a book beyond his grade level. He pronounced words, if taken out of context, he could not pronounce. No way could he sound those words and if he could sound out those words, they would be meaningless.
Reading is a: Constructivists Process -the interaction of the reader with visual/perceptual (text, pictures, and graphics) and non visual/conceptual which includes background knowledge along with knowledge of the language structure: semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic systems. The reader uses these two sources of information to construct meaning.
Phonics alone won’t make the text decodable and meaningful. Just as listening to a person whose mother tongue is other than English, the message can be more easily understood when conscious of the syntax and semantics. Listening to the order of the word in the sentences and familiarity with the topic will make the foreigner more understandable. The listener must bring meaning to the speech /conversation to get meaning from it. Often when foreigners with his/her heavy accent it is difficult to hear every word; however, usually the listener only needs to hear the first letter of a word to know what the foreigner is saying. And so it is with reading. Readers can often figure out a word just by the first letter if the reader is using meaning and syntax clues.
It is a selective process bringing together experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. One must bring meaning to print before one can acquire meaning from it.
It is a strategic process- strategies used before, during, and after reading to achieve goals.
Emmanuel Kant, a philosopher in the 18th century purported that new information, new concepts, and new ideas can have meaning only when they can be related to something the individual already knows… Reason without experience is hallow. Experience without reason is aimless.You can’t expect people to reason their way through life- it won’ t work.
John Dewey was emphatic about interaction for learning; learning can’t be on an abstract, passive mode. Learning is social. We don’t see with your eyes, or hear with your ears. We perceive with your whole being which is based upon our experiences.
Frank Smith, a psycholinguist, maintained that readers must bring meaning to print rather than expecting to receive meaning from it. As we become fluent readers we learn to rely more on what we already know, on what is behind the eyeballs and less on the print on the page in front of us. He purported that reading is an interactive process in which the reader uses two sources of information: perceptual and conceptual.
Marie Clay’s methodology reflects a philosophy and theories held by Kant, Dewey, Piaget, and Smith.
“In 1950, Clay traveled to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship and a Smith-Mundt grant to study developmental and clinical child psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Welfare. This she acknowledges as a turning point in her understanding of how to study children’s learning.”
She retuned to New Zealand, received her doctorate and developed her reading program, Reading Recovery. in ’ 84 she brought her program to the US.
Besides her method, she impacted the teaching of reading with the introduction of leveling text – not just readability text. Her leveling text focuses on: content, illustrations, length, curriculum, language structure, judgement and format – not just the readability of a text determined by DRP, Lexile, and “syntax and cohesion.”
I label Marie Clay as a Constructivist; her philosophy has all the earmarks of a Constructivist.
Teaching via phonics is an easy approach; it calls for little preparation. But it is not meaningful; it is torture for the children reading contrived stories phonetically controlled when there are so many delightful stories out there that tickle their funny bones and capture their interest.
Peace
Mary D. I appreciate this.
I have a confession to make: I support the teaching of phonics when appropriate but I cannot bring myself to believe in “the science of reading.” There is no “science of mathematics,” no “science of science,” no “science of history.” I think today we have a group of zealots who have appropriated the term “science of reading” as a way of saying “my way is right, your way is wrong.”
I agree with Diane. The term “science of reading” smells like Deformer Doublespeak.
When I was volunteer tutoring some young readers who were struggling and needed extra support, the approach they used relied on controlled text. We also looked at the pictures, wondered why something happened, made predictions, laughed at silly incidents,… whatever that child needed to make those stories come alive. As the children progressed, they got to choose books to keep for their very own. I do not understand the doctrinaire animosity expressed around learning to read. THERE IS NO PROGRAM OR PROCEDURE THAT WILL GUARANTEE THAT ALL CHILDREN BECOME PROFICIENT READERS! We can tell that from listening to the many different stories here.
The “science of math” is studied within educational psychology. It has already produced many novel interventions that work in real classrooms. The “science of science” is called metascience (a booming discipline). It has a great deal to say about credibility, culture, practical implications, and theory-building. And evidence from the psychology sciences can help improve history education. Philosophy has a role to play in education, but arguments against scientific claims ought to be better organized and communicated.
There is a long history in education research of appeals to “science” that are actually disguised advocacy. “Research shows” is simply a cudgel to silence dissenters. As the NEPC report shows, teachers must be prepared to teach the children in their classroom, some of whom definitely need phonemic instruction, others who don’t. Wise teachers know which strategies are best for the children they teach. As someone who has studied and practiced history education for many decades, I have yet to encounter any history teacher assert that there is only one correct way to teach history, and that the one correct way is “the science of history.”
Hogwash.
The problem arises when science is used to imply that any activity before this scientific study was random and that evidence based practice is the exclusive venue of commercially produced materials.. Teachers have been observing the behavior of children with an eye to understanding the processes behind growth and development and how to encourage that development far longer than those intent on cornering the market on “the science of reading” or teaching, for that matter.
Lloyd, thanks for sharing this information: “As a severely dyslexic child at age seven, before they knew what it was, my mother was told by early Deformers that were public school administrators in the 1950s, that I would never learn to read or write.”
I taught myself to read in 8th grade.
Mary, That’s intriguing. Do you remember, and could you share some pointers as to what helped you do this. I remember as a child looking at comic books like Dennis the Menace and picking out interjections. Picture word connections were important.
Nancy, my handicap of the past is deeply embedded in my cranium. It is difficult to erase humiliation, embarrassment, and a poor self-image. Patricia Polacco is an inspiration. She had great difficulty learning to read because of dyslexia, a condition about which very little was known at the time, but a seventh grade teacher discovered her problem and helped her with it. Once she could read, she read voraciously.
I had an auditory discrimination problem. The teacher tried to teach reading via the phonetic approach- a futile approach.
Following along with the Gospel readings at church was my saving grace. I was very familiar with the life of Christ so that background knowledge helped me bridge the gap. The Gospel stories were in my ear after hearing them so often.- background knowledge .
I attended a two-room schoolhouse in the country. There were five in my class. When it was my turn to read, someone standing next to me would whisper the words. Library books were purchased from “seed” money – money from selling seeds. One such book was called, Brass Knuckles. Out of curiosity I picked it up. As I tried to plow through it at home, my siblings would make fun of me, “Who is she kidding? She can’t read. She just wants to get out of work.”
In high school, the teacher read from the book and I followed along. If I couldn’t figure out a word I asked my cousin until she turned to me in disbelieve, “Can’t you read!” No more asking for help. (We had one teacher for the two grades in our one-room high school. After that we had to go to a four-year high school in a neighboring town.)
Of course my specialty for my masters was reading. All my children have degrees. My one daughter has three masters plus a doctorate in psychology. All my children read/read to their children nightly. In my one daughter’s house the punishment for not obeying would be no story that night. In my son’s house reading is “Fun Time.” After the kids are ready for bed, they pick out the books they want read or they want read.
All my grandchildren are successful readers and leaders plus receiving awards in debates, essays, and speeches. Their grandmother was not their role model.
Mary D., I would say you are the best role model! You overcame a lot to write well and convincingly. Your grandchildren should be very proud. Thanks for sharing your story.
Auditory discrimination by the way is tough to overcome with phonics. That sometimes goes unmentioned.
“Auditory discrimination by the way is tough to overcome with phonics.”
You are so diplomatic, Nancy. A phonetic heavy approach to reading would be my absolute LAST way of trying to teach someone to read who struggled with auditory discrimination. I loved Mary’s description of her son’s story telling. What fun!
For all children, but especially for the one for whom learning to read is going to be difficult, early learning must be a safe and joyful experience. Many of our students, in this land in which nearly a third live in dire poverty, come to school not ready, physically or emotionally or linguistically, for the experience. They have spent their short lives hungry or abused. They lack proper eyeglasses. They have had caretakers who didn’t take care because they were constantly teetering on one precipice or another, often as a result of our profoundly inequitable economic system. Many have almost never had an actual conversation with an adult. They are barely articulate in the spoken language and thus not ready to comprehend written language, which is merely a means for encoding a spoken one. They haven’t been read to. They haven’t put on skits for Mom and Dad and the Grandparents. They don’t have a bookcase in their room, if they have a room, brimming with Goodnight, Moon; A Snowy Day; Red Fish, Blue Fish; Thomas the Tank Engine; The Illustrated Mother Goose; and D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. They haven’t learned to associate physical books with joy and closeness to people who love them. In the ambient linguistic environment in which they reached school age, they have heard millions fewer total numbers of words and tens of thousands fewer unique lexemes than have kids from more privileged homes, and they have been exposed to much less sophisticated syntax. Some, when they have been spoken to at all by adults, have been spoken to mostly in imperatives. Such children desperately need compensatory environments in which spoken interactions and reading are rich, rewarding, joyful experiences. If a child is going to learn to read with comprehension, he or she must be ready to do so, physically, emotionally, and linguistically (having become reasonably articulate in a spoken language). Learning to read will be difficult for many kids, easy for others. And often the difficulty will have nothing to do with brain wiring and everything to do with the experiences that the child has had in his or her short life. In this, as well as in brain wiring, kids differ, as invariant “standards” do not. They need one-on-one conversations with adults who care about them. They need exposure to libraries and classroom libraries filled with enticing books. They need to be read to. They need storytime. They need jump-rope rhymes and nursery rhymes and songs and jingles. They need social interaction using spoken language. They need books that are their possessions, objects of their own. They need to memorize and enact. And so on. They need fun with language generally and with reading in particular. They need the experiences they never got. And so, the mechanics of learning to read should be only a small part of the whole of a reading “program.” However, this essay will deal only with the mechanics part. That, itself, is a lot bigger topic than is it is generally recognized to be.
The rest of this, for anyone interested, can be found here: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/09/02/on-the-pseudoscience-of-strategies-based-reading-comprehension-instruction-or-what-current-comprehension-instruction-has-in-common-with-astrology/
The largest attempted replication of the famous Hart and Risley study, one that used automatic recorders rather than people (whose presence introduced bias), found a 4 million word gap between low-SES and high SES kids going into school. That’s a difference in exposure of almost 2,000 words a day. But such studies need to look at a lot more than just sheer number of words that kid hear. They need, as well, to look at number of unique words AND at syntax–at the complexity of the sentences that kids hear. Why? Because it is from the ambient linguistic environment that we acquire vocabulary and syntax. Obviously, being way ahead in spoken language puts a kid at enormous advantage in learning to decode written language.
Thank you, Bob. Lots to look at here.