Why Johnny still can’t read

You can blame someone with a PhD in Education from Harvard for this whole mess across multiple generations. From Joanne Jacobs:

“Millions of kids are being set up to fail,” because their teachers haven’t been taught the science of reading instruction, writes Emily Hanford of APM Reports.

The basic assumption that underlies typical reading instruction in many schools is that learning to read is a natural process, much like learning to talk. But decades of scientific research has revealed that reading doesn’t come naturally. The human brain isn’t wired to read. Kids must be explicitly taught how to connect sounds with letters — phonics.

In 2000, the National Reading Panel issued a report that was supposed to end the “reading wars” between advocates of teaching phonics and supporters of whole language, a philosophy that argued children learn reading naturally if surrounded by books. The panel concluded that teaching phonics, explicitly and systematically, is a critical part of teaching reading. While some students learn without being taught, most do not.

After the report’s endorsement of phonics, whole language proponents “repackaged” their reading programs as “balanced literacy,” writes Hanford. “In balanced literacy, phonics is treated a bit like salt on a meal: a little here and there, but not too much, because it could be bad for you.”

“Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading,” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the book Language at the Speed of Sight. “It succeeded in keeping the science at bay, and it allowed things to continue as before.”

 

Right-Mind