Why Johnny Still Can't Read -- And What To Do About It via Forbes

Why Johnny Still Can't Read -- And What To Do About It

Rudolf Flesch

Forbes: 5.19.2018 by Natalie Wexler

For decades, there’s been an overwhelming scientific consensus on the best way to teach kids to read. But millions of kids still don’t get the kind of instruction that works.

In the early 1950s, Rudolf Flesch offered to tutor a boy who’d been held back in sixth grade because he couldn’t read. Flesch was horrified to discover that, at age twelve, Johnny couldn’t even decipher a simple word like kid.

The problem, Flesch realized, was that no one had taught him how to sound words out, or “decode.” Once Flesch introduced Johnny to the rules of phonics, he was off and running.

Flesch wrote a best-seller called Why Johnny Can’t Read, in which he blasted the American education system for failing to teach phonics. Students were expected to learn to read by memorizing words, using simple books like the Dick-and-Jane readers. Confronted with words they hadn’t memorized—like kid—they would hit a wall.

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Scientists have disagreed. As many as half of all children won’t learn to read unless they get systematic instruction in what are called foundational reading skills, including phonics, according to reading expert Phyllis Bertin. And even those who manage to learn to read without that kind of instruction would benefit from it.

First, kids need to learn to hear the individual sounds that make up words. Then they need to learn the rules of phonics in a logical sequence, usually beginning with consonant sounds, then moving to short vowels, long vowels, and consonant blends. And they need to practice reading words that follow the specific rules they’ve been taught.

The debate between educators and scientists became so virulent it was known as the Reading Wars, and it raged through the 1990s.

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Some reading researchers have concluded that the Reading Wars never ended; they just went underground. One cognitive neuroscientist has gone so far as to declare that the wars are over—and science lost.

If that’s the case, millions of Americans will continue to be condemned to lives of functional illiteracy. Let’s hope it’s not too late to bring the Reading Wars back out into the open—and this time, enter into a peace treaty that fully recognizes the reality of how children learn to read.  READ MORE >>