Many years back, I remember talking about this to a friend who was a teacher.
She had had an epiphany. Girls often did okay with whole language, but a boy, who might be more likely to have a speech impediment or a learning disability, or someone coming from a home where English was not the primary language, would almost certainly NOT do well. And that covered a LOT of students.
As a teacher who began my career in 1991, I was given more freedom with the methods I used for reading instruction than teachers have today, although whole language was heavily encouraged. In the 2000s, when I was tutoring ESL students, I also was able to choose my own methods, and a phonics-based approach worked very well for those students.
I don't like phonics programs which focus on memorizing a bunch of rules, though, but those that teach distinct letter-sound patterns.
I began teaching in 1988 when Whole Language was being used. It worked for a few. As an educator I had learned from those who had been teaching for many years that one method does not work for all and it is up to the teachers to learn and adjust their methods of teaching. Unfortunately one school district did not allow teaching staff to adjust for individual student needs. They keep going in circles on the methods teachers are allowed to use. Many of their students are ESL or ELL and they receive large amount of monies to keep the students from being literate in any language. Oh, my advisor in the English Dept. at my university was a whole language advocate and hated phonics based reading curriculum.
I think some children learn in spite of the method of instruction - their brains notice the patterns and put them together at a subconscious level. And some children actually don't respond well to a phonics-based system. I agree with you that teachers should have the freedom to respond to each student's needs.
You're right about funding, too. Providing extra funds for schools with a high percentage of poor readers could tend to incentivize low test scores. But that is happening at an entirely different level than teachers or principals. It parallels so many other failed government institutions and programs, like health care. At some level, some very evil people know better, and at other levels, well-meaning people think they are acting in the best interest of those they serve.
I was taught to read through Phonics and assumed everyone else was. When I read John McWhorter’s book, “Losing the Race, Self-Sabotage in Black America” in 2001, I was surprised to find d a line that a school district in Peterborough, NH, was one of a few still using Phonics in the 70s and 80s. It hit me how lucky we were that my parents landed there from NYC. My kids now go to a charter school in Peterborough that uses phonics even more intensely . The public schools in the area went from highly-sought to low-ranked when the longterm superintendents and principals retired. About 10 years ago, my mom met the new superintendent at a party and asked her the number 1 problem in the 9-town district. Her answer? Mental health. Such a sad state of affairs at so many levels.
Wow, I have no idea about teaching, I follow this account for the covid hysteria stuff. But covering the word and guessing it sounds pretty ridiculous.
Imagine being a teacher who knows this stuff doesn't work, but is forced by the school to use it. Good teachers still squeeze in "sounding out" words as much as they can, but universities have taught that whole language is the best way for so long that most teachers don't know any better.
Yes. As an applied linguist I’ve had a few friendly debates with elementary ed folks over the dinner table on the phonics vs whole language approaches. One teacher claimed to use both approaches as part of her toolbox of skills. Maybe that works. But an alphabetic language has a sound system, with varying degrees of sound-symbol correspondence (cf. English and Spanish, lol); that descriptive fact alone argues for teaching the sound system as early as letters are recognizable.
Thank you for your comment. One of my favorite college classes was Introduction to Language. The professor was fantastic. I nearly changed my major due to that class. It was one of the classes I did well in.
Cui bono? If reading in fourth grade doesn’t happen, then by 11 or 12 th grade, they certainly won’t be able to read for understanding in the sciences or ask good questions.
I had no idea as my kids were taught with phonics 30 yrs ago. This is crazy but maybe all part of the bigger “plan” to dumb down our society? Add the neurotoxicity of the childhood vaccine schedule, and we’ve lost a generation.
Why does this article have an Instacart ad? Just keep your chocolate almonds!
Anyhow, Hole in the Language must have spread rapidly from New Zealand. The Pubic Sk/Fool inflicted it on me in 1963. They did not teach reading; just relegation to third nonreading group. All boys, fwiw. Then I transferred to an experimental school where an experienced teacher found I couldn't read, so taught me phonics. Worked phenomenally well - so well it shocked the school librarian. Then the SLC Pubic Fool district, with James C. Fletcher's (NASA guy) connivance, stole all its funds, forcing it to close.
I'm a licensed teacher. I left the school system in 2014 because our county was using whole language and, as a result, many children were falling through the cracks. I started my own non-profit reading program so that I could teach phonics. It hasn't been easy, getting away from the school monopoly to forge my own path, but at least I can sleep at night knowing that I'm giving my students a strong foundation in phonics.
As a former teacher who recognized the problems with the way students were being taught to read, this podcast was so hard to listen to, knowing that this is STILL happening and doesn't appear to have a chance of going away any time soon.
Also frustrating was listening to the references to vaccination, the pandemic, and "cute little masks" worn by children *outside* in 2021! I wish she would apply the research skills she used to uncover the problems with reading instruction to these other issues!
I am interested in listening to the whole series, and I am wondering if she will address reading readiness. Children's brains are not automatically ready for reading instruction just because they have reached a certain age. One important prerequisite is phonemic awareness. If a child cannot distinguish between different sounds, the child is not ready for the symbol-to-sound instruction that is phonics.
I taught both of my boys to read. The first was ready when he was 3, but the second wasn't ready until age 4. Some kids are not ready until 7 or 8. Trying to push instruction on kids who are not ready just leads to frustration and kills a love of reading.
I highly recommend a book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," which teaches children using special symbols (each symbol makes one distinct sound) that eventually are converted to regular print.
Yes I caught the vaccine and mask comments too and literally cringed! Why even feel the need to throw that in there? Makes me question her whole point of view lol
"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is superb. I used to give free workshops to help parents get started homeschooling, and this was the only beginning reading program I recommended. The author, Siegfried Engelmann, pioneered "Direct Instruction" in reading and math, and developed school curricula in these subjects (published by McGraw-Hill and still available). He also wrote a very interesting book titled "War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse" which deals with Whole Language in detail. (Wikipedia has a good article on Engelmann which gives a good overview of his work, BTW.)
I can understand why teachers are turned off by Direct Instruction as a whole-class method. It is very structured and seems like it would not appeal to unmotivated students, or would be difficult to make sure kids were engaged.
Imagine just having a much lower student-to-teacher ratio and good instructional methods without a lot of extra remedial programs.
Yes, Direct Instruction lessons are highly structured, with two goals: (1) The teacher's communication to kids is accurate, precise, and clear so that kids understand everything correctly and without any confusion. (2) The kids are engaged and responding (to instructions or questions) frequently so that the teacher can quickly notice if a kid "doesn't get it" (so the teacher can solve this problem immediately).
A unique thing about Engelmann's Direct Instruction curricula was that they were tested with teachers properly trained to use them, teaching real kids of all types (average, advantaged, disadvantaged, English speakers, ESL kids, etc.). During the testing process, Engelmann or one of his trained observers would be in the classroom monitoring every lesson to spot anything that didn't work -- any part of the lesson when kids were confused or bored, or answered questions incorrectly, or needed extra help to complete a task.
Engelmann's attitude was "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught" and since he was testing his curricula with well-trained teachers, any failure pointed to a problem in his curriculum. The curriculum would immediately be revised to correct the problem, and the teacher would re-teach the "problem spot" the next day, if necessary; but every change in the curriculum would also be retested with a well-trained teacher and a new ("naive") batch of kids. Every curriculum was tested and revised as many times as necessary for success. And Engelmann set high standards for success -- if I remember correctly, students were tested at the end of each two-week unit, and "success" meant the testing showed that at least 92% of the students had mastered the material taught in that unit.
My experience with kids is that they love to learn. If you are doing a genuinely good job of teaching them appropriate things, they're automatically motivated -- unless, of course, they're distracted by hunger, illness, or emotional upset.
Thank you so much for sharing this. As a mom of 2 who both have dyslexia I know all too well the shortcomings of today’s “whole language” crap. And guess what the evidence based intervention is for dyslexic children? Phonics, but taught in a multi-sensory way (see: Orton-Gillingham).
There are two distinctly different Whole Language methods of teaching reading. The one discussed in the podcast that cannot work for a number of reason and there is Glenn Doman's whole word method that works beautifully. (How to teach your baby to read). Both these methods start with teaching whole words but do it in a different way.
I taught my children to read this way when they were toddlers and they have become splendid and speedy readers with amazing vocabularies. Why Doman's method works has been explained in this article. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315717657_Philosophy_and_teaching_reading_to_home-schoolers_phonics_vs_whole_words . I I also used that method to teach my sons to read in French when they started to learn French via immersion method with a French teacher. And out of pure curiosity, I myself taught to read in French using Doman's method. But Doman's methos is very different from the one described, though relies on whole words too. Yet these words are shown very briefly for a split second. (This came from military research concerning teaching soldiers to recognize the shapes of planes.) It is much more efficient than phonics, yet much more demanding on the teacher, requiring practically one-on-one education.
I taught one child to read using Doman's method, and later I taught another child to read using Siegfried Engelmann's phonics-based program "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." Both children became enthusiastic readers, but I found "100 Easy Lessons" *much* easier for me as a teacher, and the child I taught with this program loved her reading lessons and eagerly "dug into them" in a way the Doman-taught child didn't.
It's critical to realize, though, that "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is "sui generis" among phonics-based reading programs. It carefully, systematically teaches what is *necessary and sufficient* for a child to learn to read, efficiently doing two things: (1) programming the child's brain to interpret letters and letter combinations as sounds and to instantly blend sounds into words, and (2) equipping the child with a whole tool-chest of useful reading skills (such as figuring out what a word says when a phonetic pronunciation doesn't produce a recognized word -- because "English is like that."). Engelmann doesn't try to teach children unnecessary things like what a vowel or a consonant is (let alone a diphthong). This is why Engelmann's 100 easy lessons suffice to get children off to a great start in reading. (And btw, the sounding-out skills children learn in the 100 easy lessons also help a great deal when they tackle spelling.)
For years, I gave free workshops to help parents get started homeschooling their children. Engelmann's "100 Easy Lessons" was the only beginning reading program I recommended.
The program you support certainly sounds great. There are things going for Doman's method too. Although it is much more difficult on the parent, you can start much earlier and it is supported by the "systemism cum emergentism" (Mario Bunge - 16 doctorates of honoris causa) models of self-organizing systems, any systems. It fits the the models of vision, language development and use, which are not limited to reductionist framework but allow for the fact that higher level units may interact with the environment that lower level units do not. (see How does language work for some introduction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344239308_3_How_does_language_work To sum up, chose what works for parent-child team best. There are many factors to consider, and your suggestion will fit many parents, I am sure. If I were to have grand children, I would go for Doman's method again and start teaching them to read at about one year old well before the age they would find phonics appropriate. (there is another article explaining why Doman's method works, which I mentioned in my original comment. Good luck to all parents teaching their children to read. Pick what's best for you.
OMG! This could explain so much, including why obviously smart Americans have trouble putting a sentence together, why colleges complain they have to teach students basic language skills, and the general standard of English on the Internet. I don't remember learning to read, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this.
Hard to believe Whole Language is still around and kicking. It's hideously confusing for kids and massively unsuccessful. Siegfried Engelmann's book "War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse" is a great read for anyone who wants to hear how a brilliant educator fought Whole Language years ago in the state of California.
I homeschooled my own child, and for years I gave free workshops to help parents get started with homeschooling. The one and only reading program I recommended was Siegfried Engelmann's book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." If you flip through this book and think "Is all this picky detail really necessary to teach a kid to read?" -- just read the introduction to the book, and you'll understand and appreciate Engelmann's work.
Engelmann and colleagues went on to develop Direct Instruction school curricula in reading, spelling, and math. McGraw-Hill is the primary publisher of the DI programs, which are still available.
This is so needed - thx for posting this & sharing the ♥️ on this Valentine’s Day...love your articles!
Many years back, I remember talking about this to a friend who was a teacher.
She had had an epiphany. Girls often did okay with whole language, but a boy, who might be more likely to have a speech impediment or a learning disability, or someone coming from a home where English was not the primary language, would almost certainly NOT do well. And that covered a LOT of students.
As a teacher who began my career in 1991, I was given more freedom with the methods I used for reading instruction than teachers have today, although whole language was heavily encouraged. In the 2000s, when I was tutoring ESL students, I also was able to choose my own methods, and a phonics-based approach worked very well for those students.
I don't like phonics programs which focus on memorizing a bunch of rules, though, but those that teach distinct letter-sound patterns.
I began teaching in 1988 when Whole Language was being used. It worked for a few. As an educator I had learned from those who had been teaching for many years that one method does not work for all and it is up to the teachers to learn and adjust their methods of teaching. Unfortunately one school district did not allow teaching staff to adjust for individual student needs. They keep going in circles on the methods teachers are allowed to use. Many of their students are ESL or ELL and they receive large amount of monies to keep the students from being literate in any language. Oh, my advisor in the English Dept. at my university was a whole language advocate and hated phonics based reading curriculum.
I think some children learn in spite of the method of instruction - their brains notice the patterns and put them together at a subconscious level. And some children actually don't respond well to a phonics-based system. I agree with you that teachers should have the freedom to respond to each student's needs.
You're right about funding, too. Providing extra funds for schools with a high percentage of poor readers could tend to incentivize low test scores. But that is happening at an entirely different level than teachers or principals. It parallels so many other failed government institutions and programs, like health care. At some level, some very evil people know better, and at other levels, well-meaning people think they are acting in the best interest of those they serve.
One of my preschool students learned to read through sight word instruction. He was a very fluent reader and his comprehension was high.
I was taught to read through Phonics and assumed everyone else was. When I read John McWhorter’s book, “Losing the Race, Self-Sabotage in Black America” in 2001, I was surprised to find d a line that a school district in Peterborough, NH, was one of a few still using Phonics in the 70s and 80s. It hit me how lucky we were that my parents landed there from NYC. My kids now go to a charter school in Peterborough that uses phonics even more intensely . The public schools in the area went from highly-sought to low-ranked when the longterm superintendents and principals retired. About 10 years ago, my mom met the new superintendent at a party and asked her the number 1 problem in the 9-town district. Her answer? Mental health. Such a sad state of affairs at so many levels.
https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Race-Self-Sabotage-Black-America/dp/0060935936/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?crid=26FYLQYESRPDR&keywords=mcwhorter+john&qid=1676385173&sprefix=mcwhorter+john%2Caps%2C400&sr=8-7
Thank you for covering this. It is so important.
Wow, I have no idea about teaching, I follow this account for the covid hysteria stuff. But covering the word and guessing it sounds pretty ridiculous.
Imagine being a teacher who knows this stuff doesn't work, but is forced by the school to use it. Good teachers still squeeze in "sounding out" words as much as they can, but universities have taught that whole language is the best way for so long that most teachers don't know any better.
Yes. As an applied linguist I’ve had a few friendly debates with elementary ed folks over the dinner table on the phonics vs whole language approaches. One teacher claimed to use both approaches as part of her toolbox of skills. Maybe that works. But an alphabetic language has a sound system, with varying degrees of sound-symbol correspondence (cf. English and Spanish, lol); that descriptive fact alone argues for teaching the sound system as early as letters are recognizable.
Thank you for your comment. One of my favorite college classes was Introduction to Language. The professor was fantastic. I nearly changed my major due to that class. It was one of the classes I did well in.
Cui bono? If reading in fourth grade doesn’t happen, then by 11 or 12 th grade, they certainly won’t be able to read for understanding in the sciences or ask good questions.
Thank you for posting this. It is foundational.
I had no idea as my kids were taught with phonics 30 yrs ago. This is crazy but maybe all part of the bigger “plan” to dumb down our society? Add the neurotoxicity of the childhood vaccine schedule, and we’ve lost a generation.
Why does this article have an Instacart ad? Just keep your chocolate almonds!
Anyhow, Hole in the Language must have spread rapidly from New Zealand. The Pubic Sk/Fool inflicted it on me in 1963. They did not teach reading; just relegation to third nonreading group. All boys, fwiw. Then I transferred to an experimental school where an experienced teacher found I couldn't read, so taught me phonics. Worked phenomenally well - so well it shocked the school librarian. Then the SLC Pubic Fool district, with James C. Fletcher's (NASA guy) connivance, stole all its funds, forcing it to close.
I'm a licensed teacher. I left the school system in 2014 because our county was using whole language and, as a result, many children were falling through the cracks. I started my own non-profit reading program so that I could teach phonics. It hasn't been easy, getting away from the school monopoly to forge my own path, but at least I can sleep at night knowing that I'm giving my students a strong foundation in phonics.
You can find my program here:
MyReadingClub.org
As a former teacher who recognized the problems with the way students were being taught to read, this podcast was so hard to listen to, knowing that this is STILL happening and doesn't appear to have a chance of going away any time soon.
Also frustrating was listening to the references to vaccination, the pandemic, and "cute little masks" worn by children *outside* in 2021! I wish she would apply the research skills she used to uncover the problems with reading instruction to these other issues!
I am interested in listening to the whole series, and I am wondering if she will address reading readiness. Children's brains are not automatically ready for reading instruction just because they have reached a certain age. One important prerequisite is phonemic awareness. If a child cannot distinguish between different sounds, the child is not ready for the symbol-to-sound instruction that is phonics.
I taught both of my boys to read. The first was ready when he was 3, but the second wasn't ready until age 4. Some kids are not ready until 7 or 8. Trying to push instruction on kids who are not ready just leads to frustration and kills a love of reading.
I highly recommend a book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," which teaches children using special symbols (each symbol makes one distinct sound) that eventually are converted to regular print.
Yes I caught the vaccine and mask comments too and literally cringed! Why even feel the need to throw that in there? Makes me question her whole point of view lol
"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is superb. I used to give free workshops to help parents get started homeschooling, and this was the only beginning reading program I recommended. The author, Siegfried Engelmann, pioneered "Direct Instruction" in reading and math, and developed school curricula in these subjects (published by McGraw-Hill and still available). He also wrote a very interesting book titled "War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse" which deals with Whole Language in detail. (Wikipedia has a good article on Engelmann which gives a good overview of his work, BTW.)
I can understand why teachers are turned off by Direct Instruction as a whole-class method. It is very structured and seems like it would not appeal to unmotivated students, or would be difficult to make sure kids were engaged.
Imagine just having a much lower student-to-teacher ratio and good instructional methods without a lot of extra remedial programs.
Yes, Direct Instruction lessons are highly structured, with two goals: (1) The teacher's communication to kids is accurate, precise, and clear so that kids understand everything correctly and without any confusion. (2) The kids are engaged and responding (to instructions or questions) frequently so that the teacher can quickly notice if a kid "doesn't get it" (so the teacher can solve this problem immediately).
A unique thing about Engelmann's Direct Instruction curricula was that they were tested with teachers properly trained to use them, teaching real kids of all types (average, advantaged, disadvantaged, English speakers, ESL kids, etc.). During the testing process, Engelmann or one of his trained observers would be in the classroom monitoring every lesson to spot anything that didn't work -- any part of the lesson when kids were confused or bored, or answered questions incorrectly, or needed extra help to complete a task.
Engelmann's attitude was "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught" and since he was testing his curricula with well-trained teachers, any failure pointed to a problem in his curriculum. The curriculum would immediately be revised to correct the problem, and the teacher would re-teach the "problem spot" the next day, if necessary; but every change in the curriculum would also be retested with a well-trained teacher and a new ("naive") batch of kids. Every curriculum was tested and revised as many times as necessary for success. And Engelmann set high standards for success -- if I remember correctly, students were tested at the end of each two-week unit, and "success" meant the testing showed that at least 92% of the students had mastered the material taught in that unit.
My experience with kids is that they love to learn. If you are doing a genuinely good job of teaching them appropriate things, they're automatically motivated -- unless, of course, they're distracted by hunger, illness, or emotional upset.
Thank you so much for sharing this. As a mom of 2 who both have dyslexia I know all too well the shortcomings of today’s “whole language” crap. And guess what the evidence based intervention is for dyslexic children? Phonics, but taught in a multi-sensory way (see: Orton-Gillingham).
There are two distinctly different Whole Language methods of teaching reading. The one discussed in the podcast that cannot work for a number of reason and there is Glenn Doman's whole word method that works beautifully. (How to teach your baby to read). Both these methods start with teaching whole words but do it in a different way.
I taught my children to read this way when they were toddlers and they have become splendid and speedy readers with amazing vocabularies. Why Doman's method works has been explained in this article. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315717657_Philosophy_and_teaching_reading_to_home-schoolers_phonics_vs_whole_words . I I also used that method to teach my sons to read in French when they started to learn French via immersion method with a French teacher. And out of pure curiosity, I myself taught to read in French using Doman's method. But Doman's methos is very different from the one described, though relies on whole words too. Yet these words are shown very briefly for a split second. (This came from military research concerning teaching soldiers to recognize the shapes of planes.) It is much more efficient than phonics, yet much more demanding on the teacher, requiring practically one-on-one education.
I taught one child to read using Doman's method, and later I taught another child to read using Siegfried Engelmann's phonics-based program "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." Both children became enthusiastic readers, but I found "100 Easy Lessons" *much* easier for me as a teacher, and the child I taught with this program loved her reading lessons and eagerly "dug into them" in a way the Doman-taught child didn't.
It's critical to realize, though, that "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is "sui generis" among phonics-based reading programs. It carefully, systematically teaches what is *necessary and sufficient* for a child to learn to read, efficiently doing two things: (1) programming the child's brain to interpret letters and letter combinations as sounds and to instantly blend sounds into words, and (2) equipping the child with a whole tool-chest of useful reading skills (such as figuring out what a word says when a phonetic pronunciation doesn't produce a recognized word -- because "English is like that."). Engelmann doesn't try to teach children unnecessary things like what a vowel or a consonant is (let alone a diphthong). This is why Engelmann's 100 easy lessons suffice to get children off to a great start in reading. (And btw, the sounding-out skills children learn in the 100 easy lessons also help a great deal when they tackle spelling.)
For years, I gave free workshops to help parents get started homeschooling their children. Engelmann's "100 Easy Lessons" was the only beginning reading program I recommended.
The program you support certainly sounds great. There are things going for Doman's method too. Although it is much more difficult on the parent, you can start much earlier and it is supported by the "systemism cum emergentism" (Mario Bunge - 16 doctorates of honoris causa) models of self-organizing systems, any systems. It fits the the models of vision, language development and use, which are not limited to reductionist framework but allow for the fact that higher level units may interact with the environment that lower level units do not. (see How does language work for some introduction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344239308_3_How_does_language_work To sum up, chose what works for parent-child team best. There are many factors to consider, and your suggestion will fit many parents, I am sure. If I were to have grand children, I would go for Doman's method again and start teaching them to read at about one year old well before the age they would find phonics appropriate. (there is another article explaining why Doman's method works, which I mentioned in my original comment. Good luck to all parents teaching their children to read. Pick what's best for you.
OMG! This could explain so much, including why obviously smart Americans have trouble putting a sentence together, why colleges complain they have to teach students basic language skills, and the general standard of English on the Internet. I don't remember learning to read, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't like this.
Hard to believe Whole Language is still around and kicking. It's hideously confusing for kids and massively unsuccessful. Siegfried Engelmann's book "War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse" is a great read for anyone who wants to hear how a brilliant educator fought Whole Language years ago in the state of California.
I homeschooled my own child, and for years I gave free workshops to help parents get started with homeschooling. The one and only reading program I recommended was Siegfried Engelmann's book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." If you flip through this book and think "Is all this picky detail really necessary to teach a kid to read?" -- just read the introduction to the book, and you'll understand and appreciate Engelmann's work.
Engelmann and colleagues went on to develop Direct Instruction school curricula in reading, spelling, and math. McGraw-Hill is the primary publisher of the DI programs, which are still available.
I wonder how common reading disabilities are in Asians reading Asian languages?