Phonics, Balanced Literacy and Reading Wars
Almost a hundred years ago, in the 1920s, public schools started to switch from phonetic reading instruction to the whole language concept, which became fashionable as part of the constructivist movement. And suddenly America found itself having literacy problem. The country became flooded with dyslexics.
A seminal book, “Why Johnny can’t read”, came out in 1955 and explained in terse yet eloquent prose the fallacies of the methods like “look-say”, “sight words” and “whole language”, and the clear benefits of phonics for reading instruction. The book contained a mere thirty or so pages of complete reading instruction using phonetic method. Yet, there are still organizations promoting whole language method as of today, in the 21st century; there are teachers who use it, and there are droves of students who are “taught” using this method and as result they cannot read on a level required for an adult, their lives are ruined.
This still happens now! This is crime, plain and simple. These “teachers” are modern-day comprachicos, damaging not body but the mind. They are like gestapo “scientists”, who fed Jewish children with boiled out soup with no nutrients in it. The kids would eat regularly yet would die from malnutrition. This is what whole language instruction does to nutrition of the brain. The national council of teachers of English language still promotes this method despite that it does not work.
The 2001 No Child Left Behind federal program addressed the reading deficiency in elementary students and required that students must be explicitly and systematically taught five skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency. Sadly, with the current backlash against federal programs in education, there is a possibility that the phonics baby will be thrown out with Bush’s and Obama’s bathwater.
Reading is the most basic skill an educated person can have. Without ability to read there is no reason spending thirteen years in school, because all subjects rely on reading and writing, even physical education (not kidding, my son had a written test in PE class).
But in many schools kids still are “taught” using the discredited non-working “whole language” method.
Until whole language “method” is abolished, it is impossible to talk about improving situation in American public schools with a straight face.
After 28 years of kids coming into my class who couldn’t read and then leaving my class and they STILL couldn’t read because I didn’t know how to teach them, I found the Orton-Gillingham [approach to reading instruction] on my own. I took an 80-hour class that changed my teaching and changed the lives of countless students.
— Mary Binnion, former Indianapolis teacher, now a private reading tutor
The above quote is from a Chalkbeat article. Of course Ms. Binnion is a private tutor now. After she finally realized — it took her only 28 years — that the whole language snake oil does not work, she figured she could start her own business. This is the American way — you see a demand, you supply a solution, not free of course. She knows that she will have hundreds of customers because the schools still use the non-working method reading instruction.
Good for you, Mary, and for the “countless students” who pay you money for something they should have learned for free in a public school.
