I have included posts on Freddie DeBoer and Mark Seidenberg in the last few years, both of whom assure us that phonics is a demonstrably better way to teach reading, and the research shows that. I will say I still believe that. However, in this week's "The Studies Show," Stuart Ritchie and Tom Chivers say "not so fast." The opinions are different in England, it seems. They have nothing against phonics, and even think it probably superior. Yet they note that the evidence base is not as good as advertised. There is a fair bit of meta-analysis (a word to conjure with these days) that includes both apples and oranges in its data, so to speak. Systematic phonics is sometimes contrasted with unsystematic phonic, or Whole Word Language, or hybrids, or unspecified methods. They just don't believe that we fully know what we have got.
Most children learn to read regardless, so we are often measuring which method fails at 1% or 2% of the population. Even the testing is not always of reading skill, but smuggles in some values one group wants children to show and another group wants de-emphasised.
In America, a different situation prevails (see my previous posts linked above, especially Seidenberg). Education schools resist quantitative research at all. They believe teachers should be teaching love of learning, and that there is an art to this, which has nothing to do with decoding and encoding, words that sound scientific and precise but are actually ways of belittling the "mere mechanics" of teaching reading. Classroom teachers in the elementary grades aren't usually crazy or stupid and do teach such skills that they are supposed to eschew, because they do want children to learn and they sneak in ways to get them over the hump. Which is often enough. Teachers now often don't even know there is research abut this at all. So the research about the teaching of phonics may not be Phonics vs Other Methods (including WWL) but Phonics vs We-aren't-teaching-drill-and-kill, no matter what those damn ignorant conservative parents want, because we are the professionals and know what's best for your child. And to be fair, they do know a lot more than a lot of parents, who think they can land a 747 in an emergency. They wanted to be teachers and the Ed Schools worked really hard to ruin them and teach them attitudes and politics.
But some of the research is Phonics vs We don't teach Decoding, dammit, which might not tell us as much as we thought. It's a fair caution.
2 comments:
I have had many an unbidden thought lately while walking the dog, thoughts that turned into "I'm going to need to write about that to figure out what this thought actually is."
Which led to "Hmmmm...maybe I should start blogging again."
Which led to "what's the best platform to be blogging on these days since less than nobody cares about blogging anymore."
Which led to "Hmmm...I wonder if AVI is still up to his old shenanigans."
and so...here you are. still at it. Hats off, and making a leg I bow low to you sir. Persistence is a noble virtue, although it might not make a gentleman a living.
As for phonics...why does the default setting always seem to be either/or? As if there is anything in the world that is unalloyed? Why this insistence on turning everything into a conflict between this and that, when there is so much fertile fallow ground lying between the two. This tendency, this driving pathological need for bifurcation, seems to me a foundational curse of our age.
There are no scalpels. Only clubs of brute iron.
Thank you, and welcome back. Yes I am still blogging. I lost fully half of my audience because I was not enough of a covid sceptic. The bar was set pretty high on that. I noticed that people had a variety of complaints, each of which could be at least partially answered - and sometimes fully - but they needed to make them add up to 100%. There was something chilling about watching people who had shown themselves to be reasonable in other places believing amazing crap about this one.
You came at a good time. I am reprising all eighteen years a month at a time, in and amongst my usual writing. So 5-10% - not necessarily the best, but usually things you won't find elsewhere - of my posts back to 2005 are being brought forward. So you may not only be reminded of things you read 10-15 years ago, you might even see some of your own comments from that time. I still write about other things, of course, but very little about politics. I grew tired of preaching the same sermon, that the other side might have at least some small points worth regarding and your own side might have some prize knuckleheads. That song has been sung. There are people who have the patience and strength of character to keep repeating their teaching, but I am not one of them. I haven't the good character for that.
We are doing the James Bryant Smith books based on Dallas Willard for adult Sunday School, and Tom is one of the co-leaders. We are currently on forgiveness, a topic I have learned something about solely because it does not come naturally to me.
The annual Christmas letter will be up soon this year, because a friend is leaving for Germany for three months and Chris and Maria are here by surprise from Norway. That will catch you up on the personal news. OR you can browse last December and the December before that.
Very glad to have you again.
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