Friday, July 9, 2021

Yes!

There were several reasons I became a reader. Dad read to me and took me to the library. And phonics were still, in the 1950s, used to teach reading in the elementary schools I attended. From "American schools teach reading all wrong":
PHONICS, WHICH involves sounding-out words syllable by syllable, is the best way to teach children to read. But in many classrooms, ff-on-ics is a dirty sound. Kymyona Burk, who implemented Mississippi’s statewide literacy programme, says that some teachers have had to sneak phonics teaching materials into the classroom, like some kind of samizdat. Teaching reading any other way is “malpractice”, says Ms Burk. And yet for reasons that include politics, partisanship and personal experience, most American children are taught to read in a way that study after study has found to be wrong.

The consequences of this are striking. Less than half (48%) of all American adults were proficient readers in 2017. American fourth graders (nine-to ten-year olds) rank 15th on the Progress in International Literacy Study, an international exam. ....
"American schools teach reading all wrong," The Economist, Jun 12th 2021.

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