Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Reading Is Fundamental

MYTH: Children learn to talk by being exposed to a language-rich environment. Therefore, they will learn to read by simply being exposed to a reading-rich environment without need for much reading instruction.

The ability to read defines literacy, and a literate populace is essential to a free, informed society. With that in mind, the founding purpose of schools in America over 300 years ago was to teach children to read. For over 250 years, our schools pursued that foundational purpose with noticeable success. Unfortunately, schools today seem no longer to be following their founding precepts. Reading scores are plummeting despite huge amounts of effort and resources being expended in an effort to reverse the trend.

It is difficult to ignore the diminishing reading abilities of today’s students with facts such as these: In California, a study conducted among 374 Sacramento first and second graders found them at the 23rd percentile on a nationally administered standardized reading test. Newsweek recently reported that none of the fourth grade students in ten of 22 Camden, NJ, elementary schools passed the state’s reading proficiency test. Nationally, 40% of fourth graders lack basic skills in reading, and the number is somewhat higher for high school students. Reading below the basic level means that these students demonstrate “little or no mastery of the knowledge necessary to perform work at each grade level” (National Assessment of Educational Progress).
The culprit behind this disaster is a reading instruction philosophy called “whole language.” It is one of the educational reforms, like the infamous “new math,” that inundated public schools in the 1970s and 80s. However, unlike new math this one is still around. Whole language advocates enthusiastically promoted the concept as a method of improving reading skills among all children regardless of social or economic background or cognitive ability.

Whole language is really nothing new. The debate over the effectiveness of phonics (how letters sound) and any other trendy reading instruction format (that emphasizes whole words and stories, but not the sounds letters make) has been going on for decades. “Why Johnny Can’t Read” was published in 1955. It was an attempt to bring attention to the damaging effects of the method of reading instruction that was prevalent at the time. Back then, a method similar to whole language was competing with phonics and was known as “look-say” and “sight reading.” The difference now is that whole language has the weight of “research” behind it to make it appear effective. The fact is that, like most educational reforms, there is little or no evidence to support its claims of success. There is, however, a mass of evidence that proves the opposite.
So what is whole language? Whole language advocates believe that children can learn to read in much the same way they learn to speak. If children learn to talk by being exposed to a language-rich environment, it follows that they will learn to read by being exposed to a reading-rich environment without need for much instruction. The whole language teacher is primarily a facilitator overseeing students in a non-threatening (read that non-correcting, non-teaching) atmosphere.

Children in whole language programs memorize a few dozen frequently used words and assume context by pictures on the page. They are taught to guess rather than sound out unfamiliar words. They are never criticized for mistakes, but encouraged to take chances. They are taught to skip words they don’t know (skipping strategies) and to substitute or predict words that seem to fit the context. When writing, whole language children use “invented” spelling, punctuation, and grammar without fear of being marked wrong. “Invented spelling has always gotten, and still gets, dismal long-term results,” writes Myrna McCulloch, founder of the nonprofit literacy corporation The Riggs Institute, “because it programs the young mind with the wrong information which is not easily erased.” The priority is not literacy, but self esteem.
Together, cognitive psychologist Frank Smith and University of Arizona professor Ken Goodman, developed the theories behind whole language in the late 1960s. They conducted research which essentially consisted of listening to people read aloud. Apparently Prof. Goodman could not believe that the human brain was capable of processing visual symbols into sounds as rapidly as was being demonstrated. He reasoned that the readers were guessing words in sequence based on context and were not relying on spelling. He further reasoned that if the ability to guess could be improved and reliance on individual letters de-emphasized that reading ability would improve. It was Smith who concluded that reading was acquired in the same way as the spoken word and should be taught in as natural a way as possible.

However, if Goodman and Smith were serious researchers, they would have found that readers do fixate on every letter in a text. They would have also learned that each letter is unconsciously sounded out with incredible speed. McCulloch says, “Comprehension ‘happens’ because (readers) analyze, think, deduce, and create as they move through...integrated steps to mastery of their language. Once decoding is automatic, the mind ‘frees’ for full comprehension.”
Unfortunately, the theories developed by Goodman and Smith have given academic validity to the old look-say and sight reading methods. And like most trendy educational reforms, they have been inaugurated with much fan fare and hollow promises, but very little evidence of effectiveness. When asked if research studies from other disciplines supported his findings, Professor Goodman could not identify any. “There is no know research to support their theory,” says McCulloch.

By the 1980s, whole language was well established in teachers colleges. And there has been no lessening of its influence in the years since. In university teacher training programs, young teacher candidates, eager to learn the procedures of their trade, enthusiastically absorb lessons taught by liberal professors. These professors have little or no real world experience. They are either the developers (like Goodman, and thus have a vested interest in the promotion of these twisted ideas), or are disciples of Age of Aquarius instructional methods. Because these methods have been buttressed with a sequence of activities, it is easy to pass them off as effective, meaningful, and serious. The professors further back up their claims of success with new age double speak, false statistics, and outright lies.

Eager, young teachers in training learn methods that appear to be sound pedagogical procedures because of their logical sequence of activities. They are told how wonderfully effective these methods are. And, with newly acquired skills and undergraduate degrees, the new teachers unsuspectingly go forth into the schools to spread the infection yet further. These unsuspecting novices, taught to believe that what they do is effective because their university instructors told them so, go through the motions of teaching children to read. When they don’t get it, the kids are classified as ADHD, dyslexic, or are branded as developmentally disabled, and the teachers unions scream for more money to expand the programs. The whole language crowd would never admit to its part in the stupification of America’s children. Instead they point trembling, tear stained fingers at social, economic, or racial factors as reasons for unacceptable outcomes. The irony is that these are the very factors that whole language was intended to transcend.
The fact is, phonics works, whole language doesn’t. Whole language relies heavily on context and visual cues making it a pictographic form of reading, which is completely antithetical for use with an auditory form. “Phonics by definition is first auditory as is training in phonemic awareness,” writes McCulloch. “Children...must articulate the sounds (of letters); that means not with key word or pictures. Sounds go with symbols or the letters which stand for the sounds on paper. The English alphabet is a sounds/symbol system. It is not a pictographic system.”

This debate begs the question, “Why can’t Johnny read?” Well, the answer is, “Because, while they were teaching him to feel good about himself, no one taught Johnny how to read.”