A disadvantaged child just wants to fit in – not be left out …
it is my understanding that the public school system was set up in the first instance to equalise opportunities for the children whose parents were unable to offer what the more affluent and educated parents could offer.
This is no longer the case. Current methods of “teaching” infants further disadvantage the already disadvantaged child, who needs direct and explicit instruction. Instruction that does not rely on a child having prior learning, experience of books, a wide vocabulary and parents who can read. These children deserve to be taught to read so that they have access to ALL of the above advantages.
A teacher using a direct instruction approach (in other words, a teacher who ‘teaches’) serves every student in the class. All learners benefit but most of all the disadvantaged child benefits. It is an inclusive system.
Further, it ensures that many children, who succeed initially due to a privileged background & much support, will, in addition, be well versed in the alphabetic skills that are required in grade 4/5. These skills are vital for a successful transition to multi-syllabic words. (See VAS Theory Eve’s Story)
Loss of equal opportunity for a large portion of the population is not only a huge loss to society, it is an enormous cost to English speaking nations across the world.
Jean
I refer readers to Britain where, in a study of 150,000 children (“Sponsored Reading Failure”) Britain’s foremost researcher Martin Turner uncovered the greatest peacetime decline in reading standards since records were kept and traced the decline back to the introduction of Whole Language to beginner readers.
Slip over the border to Scotland where the Clackmananshire Longitudinal Study compared outcomes of three strategies and found that not only did the phonics-first group come out on top in almost every aspect of reading but that 10 years later, they maintain that superiority.
Just in case you have trouble thinking this is not a deliberate act of academic and bureaucratic concealment, look at Australia where our national inquiry into the teaching of reading concluded 10 years ago that a phonics-first approach produced the best outcomes and yet 10 years later still doesn’t test phonic skills. You may be surprised to learn that the home of Goodman and Whole Language, (Tucson, Arizona), conducted the massive ‘Follow Through Study’ ($2 billion in today’s money) and found Whole Language-type teaching to be among the worst of all the teaching strategies in vogue. And judge the influence of our academics when I tell you that despite this finding, 4 years later Australian academics still mandated Whole Language in Australia. I could go on with the litany of failure but let me share some data from my practice. In part of a study of 3000 consecutive children I found that, after 3 years of schooling: 44% made more than 5 errors in the sounds of the alphabet, 29% confused letter names and sounds in 3 letter words (mad misread as maid), 15% confused b/d (bog/dog), 38% repeatedly misread 3 letter words for a range of reasons,10% made repeated guess-related errors on phonetically-regular 2 syllable words (e.g. picnic/picture), 88% made repeated errors on regular 3 syllable words (Eromanga, Continent etc), 70% repeatedly showed the signature, mid-word errors of a whole word guesser on 3 letter words (big misread as bag). etc etc.
In case you are still not concerned, you should know that the above data related to those cases where both the child and parent believed that the child was an ‘AVERAGE’ reader. The data on the ‘failing readers’ was even worse.
We hear similar reports from teachers on-line and during our lectures throughout Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Britain.
The full data-set can be seen at http://www.vasreadingecho.com ; explanatory lectures and slide shows can be found at http://www.vaslearningcentre.com
What makes you think that we haven’t got a crisis?Byron Harrison
Chairman VAS Research P/L
Tasmania
Australia
04-100-365-83