Patricia's daughter's first grade teacher was a hack if she truly thought comprehension was immaterial. But it probably was not entirely her fault -- she was most likely trained by true hacks who actually thought such things.
Of course phonics (or more broadly grapho-phonemic cueing -- the process of correlating graphic symbols to speech sounds) has a role in reading development. But what this research shows is precisely that it doesn't hold a primary role, and specifically that phonics -- the ability to isolate and recognize individual phonemes in a text -- is of relatively minor importance in learning to read. This is directly contrary to the current politically favored view that mastery of phonemic awareness is a necessary pre-requisite to reading, and that phonics is the primary skill in reading development.
The wider professional view is, and always has been that the most effective curricula take a balanced approach incorporating skill and strategy development in all three of the key cueing systems: grapho-phonemic, syntactic, and semantic. When we read, all of these things are working together. If you are just using "phonics," you aren't reading, you're decoding. I can decode a submarine technical manual, but my understanding of it would be very limited. The recent phonics craze here in the USA is producing fourth and fifth graders who may be proficient decoders, but don't know what they're "reading." In the biz, we call it "word calling." Very sad and maddening. I could rant a long time about the National Reading Panel report and No Child Left Behind and how they are destroying public education, but I am too tired right now.
But I will recall the thread of an argument by literacy researcher James Cunningham (not the poet). One thing he points out is that the "pendulum" in the reading wars is unlike a real pendulum in that it spends all of its time at one or another of the extremes and never passes through the middle (aide -- there is similar pendulum in literary and cultural criticism, IMO). He also points out that as long as we let legislators and the political process control curriculum we are doomed. We need to take teaching seriously as a profession and let that profession establish its best practices. He asks, "why don't we hold an election to vote on what is the best treatment for, say, lung cancer?"
I thought said I was too tired to rant. Better stop now.
David R.
[This message has been edited by David Rosenthal (edited August 16, 2005).]
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