After decades of experimenting with other methods for teaching reading, New York goes back to the tried and true: phonics (NY Times). That is, sounding out words based on what each letter sounds like, then deriving the meaning from the sound.
As the school superintendant says, there is now a lot of data showing that a highly structured curriculum based on phonics drill gets more children reading faster than any other. If you're wondering why there is so much resistance to phonics, consider:
1) Fluent readers don't read this way. They just recognize words, and in fact often intuit whole phrases without all the words even being present. So if you learn to read phonetically, you then have to learn a completely different method to read with real fluency. This seems like a problem, but I have never seen any evidence that it actually is. It does, though, raise the question: why do we want children to learn to read in a way that nobody who can read actually does it? Doesn't that seem like a huge waste of effort? Shouldn't there be a way to cut that out?
2) It's boring. A majority of children learn to read easily no matter what method you use, and beyond the first few months phonics is tedious for both teachers and students. So if you use the sort of structured curriculum that has been shown to help poor readers, you are inflicting misery on the kids who don't need that kind of drill and would be a lot happier just reading stories and talking about them. This enters the discouse in terms of "children's passion for books," which some teachers are afraid will be lost in a structured, phonics-based system. Which might be an argument for tracked classes, but that gets us into another big political fight.
3) While, as I said, there is a lot of evidence that a structured phonics curriculum gets more students reading, there are plenty of studies that show the opposite. Also, there has been a movement back toward phonics over the past 15 years and where these curricula have been introduced, the gains have been modest.
Incidentally I taught my eldest son to read, or to read well, after word came from the school that he was not meeting the key reading benchmarks for 9-year-olds. (He is a pretty severe ADHD case.) So I made him sit down every night with me while we and also my 7-year-old daughter (who insisted on joining) took turns reading out loud to each other from a story book. After three or four months of that he was back on track, and my daughter was vaulting ahead.
Which gets me to the thing that studies show most helps children learn: one on one attention from people who care.
1) Fluent readers don't read this way. They just recognize words, and in fact often intuit whole phrases without all the words even being present. So if you learn to read phonetically, you then have to learn a completely different method to read with real fluency. This seems like a problem, but I have never seen any evidence that it actually is. It does, though, raise the question: why do we want children to learn to read in a way that nobody who can read actually does it? Doesn't that seem like a huge waste of effort? Shouldn't there be a way to cut that out?
ReplyDeleteFluent math-users don't perform addition by counting on their fingers - they just recognize certain combinations of numbers and recall the memorized sum, and indeed can often intuit the answers to whole chains of sums and other calculations - and yet we don't question the utility of children learning to grasp the basics that way.
Skilled painters don't create their works by applying paint to canvas via their hands - they use brushes. "Why do we want children to learn to pain in a way that nobody who can paint actually does it?" "Doesn't finger painting seem like a huge waste of effort?" "Shouldn't there be a way to cut that out?" Such absurd questions!
You learn to crawl before you learn to walk, despite walking being superior to crawling. You likewise learn to walk before you learn to run. These are not wasted efforts, nor should any sane person suppose that they are unnecessary and "should be able to be cut out".
Basics matter. It doesn't matter what fluent readers do - what matters is what builds the best foundation for future learning for those who are just starting out. Phonics is useful not because it is the primary way in which a person will decipher language later on, but because it helps them grasp the most basic and elementary aspects of the endeavor, gain confidence, and have a point of reference to work off of when learning more sophisticated methods down the road.
This all seems absurdly obvious and wholly self-evident to me, and I'm genuinely shocked that this is something people are puzzled by or concerned about. Particularly people who are in charge of making decisions about public education!
2) It's boring. A majority of children learn to read easily no matter what method you use, and beyond the first few months phonics is tedious for both teachers and students. So if you use the sort of structured curriculum that has been shown to help poor readers, you are inflicting misery on the kids who don't need that kind of drill and would be a lot happier just reading stories and talking about them.
ReplyDeleteBoring compared to what? Are the other available options somehow more entertaining?
Unstructured curriculum has the problem that it doesn't serve the kids who struggle, and we find that unacceptable, so any realistic comparison we make has to be to other forms of structured learning.
In that context, is phonics somehow particularly boring when viewed against comparable problems? Rote memorization seems far MORE boring, to my mind - and to the minds of many people throughout history, if you care to look for historical perspectives.
Most of the problems with phonics are all the same problems we experience in every other form of teaching. It works better one on one, or in small groups? So does everything! We need to fix classroom sizes, not blame the method of instruction itself.
It doesn't work for everyone? Of course not - nothing does! Phonics is notably far less effective for children who suffer from dyslexia, for example, and that makes perfect sense. But again, that's a matter primarily of classroom structure - children with special needs (unsurprisingly!) need special accommodation!
Our problem is we refuse to dedicate the resources needed to properly serve everyone. We don't pay teachers enough or treat them well enough, and so we have a chronic shortage of people willing to work as teachers, and our classroom sizes balloon to absurd levels that hurt overall learning. We physically build our schools around the expectation of oversized classes, further solidifying the problem - you not only need more teachers to teach multiple smaller classes, you also need more space to teach in.
We also rely on the crutch of "one-size-fits-all" teaching and learning expectations. We are concerned about giving extra attention to the children who are struggling, because we worry the ones who aren't struggling will get bored. But why does that even need to be a choice? People don't all learn at the same pace! We should be accommodating different learning speeds!
The kids who need the extra time and help should get it, and the kids who don't should be allowed to either move on to more advanced materials -OR- should be allowed to go and do some alternative activity which may be purely recreational, preventing them from having to sit around and be bored waiting for others to catch up - or worse, being forced to do busy work and repeat the material they've already mastered.
But of course, that would require more teachers and more spaces to separate out the excelling kids from those who are struggling so they can do different things - and we already stubbornly refuse to devote resources to hiring more teachers or building more learning spaces. The richest nation on the planet, and we can't find the money to make teaching a desirable job or schools enjoyable places for children to be!
The solution is plain as day, staring us in the face - hire more teachers and build better schools. But we'd rather cut taxes for billionaires and shovel ever more money into our bloated "defense" budget, and then turn around and blame our laughable education system on some imagined failure of teaching methodology rather than fundamental organizational structure.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteGive it a rest, please.