The debate over the most effective method of teaching children to read has been going on for more than a century. Traditionalists believe that the most effective way to teach reading is to have students learn the alphabet, learn the sounds each letter makes, and then learn to blend the sounds in order to form words. Only when the student masters this decoding, they say, is he ready to learn to read. This practice is called systematic phonics. In the mid-nineteenth century, Horace Mann, the secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, challenged the effectiveness of this method. He stated that the letters of the alphabet are "bloodless, ghostly apparitions" responsible for "steeping [children's] faculties in lethargy" (Levine). He promoted the "look-say" method25 dominant in American education from the 1920s to the 1950s. This method taught children whole words instead of component sounds.
In the 1950s, Rudolf Flesch challenged Mann's method in his book Why Johnny Can't Read. Many new studies followed. Each attacked the "look-say" method. The conclusion of the studies: systematic phonics was the best method to teach children to read. By the 1970s, most schools had again adopted phonics over "look-say." But critics countered that systematic phonics, with its worksheet drills and Dick-and-Jane-type stories, squelched children's interest in reading. They also argued that reading groups that organize children by ability stigmatize children and promote failure. Ken Goodman, a professor of education at the University of Arizona, and a leading academic in the whole-language movement, claimed that children learn to read by figuring out the meaning of words in context. The Whole Language Teacher's Newsletter recommends teaching children confronted by an unfamiliar word to "skip it, use prior information…or put in another word that makes sense. Don't sound-it-out" (Levine). (Is it any wonder then that most 4th graders would not be able to explain the author's statements in a text selection, if they are taught to skip over or substitute words?26)
As of December 1994, the whole language method was used by a fifth of all reading teachers despite a 1990 study by the U.S. Department of Education, Beginning to Read. The study concluded that "explicit phonics resulted in comprehension skills that are at least comparable to, and word recognition and spelling skills that are significantly better than … [methods] that do not [include phonics]" (Levine). In 1997, Congress asked the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to convene a national panel. It would study researched methods of reading instruction and conclude which method was the most effective. The panel of 14 included "leading scientists in reading research, representatives of colleges of education, reading teachers, educational administrators, and parents."27 In a report published in April 2000, they concluded that systematic phonics was a necessary component in an overall method for teaching reading. They also concluded that this method was ready for implementation in the classroom since "systematic phonics instruction has been widely used over a long period of time with positive results, and a variety of systematic phonics programs have proven effective with children of different ages, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds." The National Reading Panel also emphasized that phonics is only one component in an effective teaching strategy. Other components include "phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension strategies."28
Using this study as a guide, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension were incorporated into the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The Act provides grants to districts in which students are "systematically and explicitly" taught these skills. The Act (and the press releases and fact sheets about it) emphasizes the "solid scientific research" to support these teaching strategies as opposed to the "many unproven fads and fashions in reading instruction… that have hurt our kids" in the past.
Who can argue with "solid scientific research"? The supporters of the whole language method can. Supporters of this method of teaching criticize the National Reading Panel for having excluded certain studies from their analysis. The critics say that by limiting their analysis to studies that yield measurable results, they exclude valid research and case studies that could provide insight into other methods that may be effective in the classroom (Manzo).
Educators also criticize the stringent guidelines, saying that in order to meet the requirements for funding, they will have to follow commercially packaged reading programs, leaving little leeway to tailor their teaching to the students' needs. Their concerns are not totally unfounded. In the late 1960s, Seigfried Engelmann, then a professor at the University of Illinois, founded the Direct Instruction movement. The curriculum requires teachers to adhere to scripted, sequenced lessons. Despite criticisms of this method by educators, in 1999, 1,100 schools in the U.S. used this method to teach reading.
Will systematic phonics instruction boost student testing scores and put the United States on top in reading achievement? We may have to wait until the results of next NAEP reading test are published. But, given the history of this debate, the results still may not provide any clear answers. Underlying this debate are two opposing philosophies of how children learn, the adherents of each strongly committed.
The next panel will examine the controversy over Whole Math.
Sources: U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. The Nation's Report Card: Fourth Grade Reading Highlights 2000. Online. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2000/2001513.pdf. June 6, 2002. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction, 2000. Online. Available: http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.pdf. June 6, 2002. "The Facts About Reading Achievement." Online. Available: http://www.NoChildLeftBehind.gov. "Phonics & Whole Language." June 7, 2002. Education Week on the Web, June 5, 2002. Online. Available: //www.edweek.org. June 7, 2002. Kathleen Kennedy Manzo. "Some Educators See Reading Rules as Too Restrictive." Education Week on the Web, February 20, 2002. Online. Available: http://www.edweek.org. June 7, 2002. "A Direct Challenge." Education Week, 17 March 1999. Kleinfield, N.R. "The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts." New York Times, 2 June 2002. Art Levine. "The Great Debate Revisited." The Atlantic Monthly Online, December 1994. Online. Available: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/educatio/levine.htm. June 12, 2002.
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