This might sound like a wild-eyed conspiracy theory, but unfortunately it’s true. The national reading policy has, for years, been controlled by a lunatic fringe who reject phonics as a tool for teaching reading.
From The Australian:
THE nation’s most respected remedial reading experts have criticised the National Curriculum Board for caving in to the demands of a fringe group of university academics and teachers who argue against a back-to-basics emphasis on phonics in teaching reading.
The experts have written to Julia Gillard, explaining that “the “explicit and systematic” teaching of the letter-sound relationships is required to learn to read.”
Let me get you up to speed real quick.
Words (in English) are made up of letters. One of the key skills in learning to read in English is figuring out the letter-sound relationships. This involves, for instance, the concept of “sounding out.” The child figures out that the word CAT is not just a strange bunch of squiggles, but is a combination of the sounds “c” “a” “t”. WHen they see that the letters make these sounds, they’re well on the road to reading.
This is the basis of phonics. Learn that C makes a sound like s (as in “cedar”) and also K (as in “cat”).
The problem is, it takes a while for this to sink in and there are a lot of rules and exceptions (for instance, irregular words like pint and yacht). And it can get a bit tedious. However with patience and a lot of practice, almost all children can learn to read with a phonics based education.
Enter the radicals.
Old-style schooling is boring and oppressive, they say. Learning should be fun! No more sitting on the floor repeating after the teacher, “C-A-T spells CAT. M-A-T spells MAT.”
No, these people believe that simply being exposed to the words is enough to learn to read, and that teaching letter-sound relationships, as is done with phonics, is actually counter-productive. They make a great fuss about exceptions to the rules (yacht, etc).
Unfortunately, they’re wrong. It would be lovely if they were right, and all we had to do was read stories to kids and they’d learn to read, but the evidence is in: phonics works, whole-word reading doesn’t.
There is a scientific consensus on this issue.
I understand the irony of invoking consensus here – given the public debate on global warming. (note: I’m using the word “consensus” rather tongue-in-cheek to tell the truth… what I actually mean is that the evidence is overwhelming and the experts all agree). This is based on transparent experiments. There have been controlled trials that have explicitly tested these ideas, phonics versus whole word, and phonics wins. Boring, old-fashioned phonics.
Actually it doesn’t have to be boring. Innovative strategies like teaming kids up together, increased teacher training, and rapid-paced instruction can all accelerate learning and make it more fun.
Whole word reading programs are the educational equivalent of crystal healing or alchemy. They have no place in a modern society. Worse, they’re dangerous: we’re at risk of creating an illiterate generation because of the well-meaning ignorance of a group of fringe activists.
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I have never studied any of the literature on how to teach kids to read. Instead, I have based my approach on how my grannie taught me to read when I was 3 or 4. Monkey is now 3, approaching 4, and he is lapping up what I now know to be phonics, which is how I was taught to read. We sit at the table, I draw a picture (hat, cat, car, dog, egg, milk etc) and we then spell out the letters and make the sounds. Sure, it takes a while for them to grasp it, and there are days when he is just not interested, but it’s clear as daylight to me that this is the way to go. I suspect none of these bonehead academics actually have kids – and if they do, they are too busy attending conferences at our expense to be teaching the little dears anything.
Well done DD. Unfortunately other values the same academics bring to bear are having unsavoury influences on many parts of society. Having put 3 boys and 1 girl through mainly private education, I’m sad to say that today’s female dominated, sports lacking school environments are taking a terrible toll on the nation’s males. The so called caring nature has killed the competitive spirit.