When will we ever learn?

 When will we ever learn?

 

That line is a refrain from an old folk tune.   Today it is very relevant to the teaching of reading in New York City.   It seems the City of New York is the latest in an increasingly long line of folks who are convinced that the “science or reading” requires the teaching of phonics.  It seems that many children, particularly those in minority plurality schools, are not proficient in reading.   This situation is unacceptable so the cure for the problem is to require that all schools chose from one three packaged programs that are phonics based.  Afterall these are evidenced based instructional programs.  These programs will be replacing balanced literature programs that seek to have kids Enjoy Reading!!! On my God, not that!

Classrooms across the country are seeing lower scores in both reading and math.   Just might be that all that virtual learning wasn’t much learning on the part of kids and lazy teaching on the part of teachers.

The debate on how to best teach reading dates back to post WWII when the universal conscription for the war brought to light the fact that there were lots of young adults out there who couldn’t read.

In the ‘50’s schools used a program called the “whole word” approach.  By the ‘70’s it had morphed into the “whole language” approach.  By the ‘90’s it was discovered that there were some kids who were not good readers!   So, it was and so it will always be until we get off of this one size fits all approach to the teaching of reading.  One size fits all doesn’t work for coats and it doesn’t work for reading.

Tell me what method of teaching reading you want to espouse and I can find some research that supports the efficacy of that method.

We need to stop having smart, middle and dumb reading groups.  Regardless of what you call the groups, the kids know.   Having only one method of teaching reading just changes who is in the dumb reading group because the dumb kids will just be the kids who do not learn by that method.  Sort of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  

Phonics based approaches to teaching reading are really boring.  But if that is the way a kid learns best the pain is well worth the gain.   If it is not the way the child learns best, the suffering is compounded.

We should teach reading in basically three different ways, phonics, whole language and multi-sensory with an emphasis on motor input.   The reading groups should align with the method being taught to those kids.   Yes, that is more work for the teacher.  But if we want kids to read better, we need to teach them through a method that matches how they learn.  When will we ever learn this simple truth?