3 Ways Phonics Denialists Will Try to Fool You via Teaching Battleground

3 Ways Phonics Denialists Will Try to Fool You

Teaching Battleground: 11.25.2017

I don’t teach reading. The only reason I take an interest in the phonics “debate” is that it’s the one area of teaching where the evidence seems overwhelming. Study after study, review after review (or rather the ones that look at a significant body of empirical evidence) conclude that the closer a method of teaching reading is to Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP), the better it is. This is not just the best established empirical result in education, it’s probably the best established result in the entire social sciences. As such, the teaching profession’s willingness to listen to the evidence about this, also indicates our status as evidence-informed, rational professionals.

Unfortunately, like climate change, evolution or vaccination, the conclusions reached are challenging to some ideologies. This means there are those who wish to deny the evidence, usually by confusing people, misleading them or outright lying to them. I wrote about phonics denialism  a few years ago.

A Very Short Summary of the Phonics Debate

Is Phonics Being Implemented Correctly?

A Response about the Implementation of Phonics

The Latest Iteration of the Phonics Debate

Phonics Denialism and Rational Debate

Revisiting the Debate Over the Davis Phonics Pamphlet: Part 1

Revisiting the Debate Over the Davis Phonics Pamphlet: Part 2

Revisiting the Debate Over the Davis Phonics Pamphlet: Part 3

The arguments against the phonics screening check have been discredited

Since then, some of the debate has moved on. The introduction of the phonics check has undermined those who claim to be teaching phonics, but not SSP. The check is a test of being able to read the phonetic information in text, if children have been taught phonics successfully they will pass it. Anyone who claims that the check will not work for the kids they have taught phonics to, has not taught phonics, and that seems to have ended that debate. Another, now discredited, argument was that the phonics check would penalise good readers because, despite decades of research indicating the opposite, good readers no longer use phonetic information to read. The results show this isn’t true. So denialists have moved on (or at least they have when there are people around who might challenge them, there are still publishers and newspapers that will print any old nonsense uncritically). Here are the 3 arguments I now hear most often from phonics denialists.  READ MORE >>