Image vs. Reality (Essays in Frustration)

READING AND EDUCATION: Education is the mechanism by which we transfer civilization from one generation to the next. Learning to read is the most important part of education, because it permits a serious student to learn almost anything else without further assistance. Unfortunately, we seem to hold learning, ability, and competence itself in relatively low esteem, preferring credentials such as diplomas or degrees...

Like many parents, I had ignored “the reading problem” until my own children ran into it headlong. Then, of necessity, I spent a lot of time studying the material available on the subject. What I found out surprised even me. This essay, published in the Sept. 1, 1976, Courier Post (Camden County, NJ) summarizes my discoveries.

Phonics, Look-Say and Ideology

It’s back-to-school time, and once again the annual battle is joined: the proponents of Phonics, mostly conservative, attack the liberal defenders of Look-Say. As in most cases where ideology replaces intelligence, both are wrong. And, although the cathartic effects of the battle are exhilarating, little is accomplished to improve reading instruction.

The Look-Say method, as used in most public schools today, needs no attack; it is actually as bad as most of its critics insist and objective tests prove. Perhaps its worst feature — worse even than trying to pair an inexhaustible set of remarkably similar symbols with known words — is the use of “context clues.” The student is supposed to guess the words from the context rather than build up contexts from the printed words. Although children like guessing games better than almost anything, this is one they can’t win. It has been demonstrated repeatedly that wrong answers, once given, are learned as well as the right answers would have been, and have to be unlearned before progress can be made.

The faults of phonics are not quite so obvious, particularly to those riding ideological hobby horses.

Most of the most commonly used words in English have irregular spelling, and do not follow phonic rules. Phonics requires little children to memorize many long, complicated rules, most of which are wrong. Phonics is based on the incorrect idea that letters have sounds; actually, sounds are represented by letters. Finally, phonics requires supposed letter sounds to be combined by means of “blends” to make words. Unfortunately, blends do not exist.

To illustrate these points, consider the sentence: “I have known rough photographers.” Not one word in this sentence, typical of English, is phonic. Or consider this rule: If a word ends in a silent “e” preceded by a single consonant, a single vowel before the consonant is pronounced “long.” Even when shortened and oversimplified to “a silent ‘e’ makes a vowel say its name,” the word “have” in our test sentence above does not work. Other phonic rules have about the same batting average.

Do letters have sounds? Consider “o” in “Hot blood is often good food.” Or “h” in “The rough photographer went through the house.” Each vowel, of course, is related to many sounds, and most consonants must be used with vowels or other consonants to make pronounceable sounds. But even in completely phonic words such as “hat,” the combination of such sounds as Hah Ah Tuh can only be blended to produce the final result by an adult who already knows the answer. To a child learning to read, the “blend” is a major mystery requiring infinite faith which is simply not justified.

But perhaps the worst feature of phonics is, once again, guessing games. In phonics, the student is supposed to guess the spelling of words from phonic rules; this usually leads to disaster in our irregular language. On the other hand, spelling out a word often leads a poor reader to discover that he or she can pronounce it, after all. You can define the word from the spelling, but not the spelling from the sound of the word.

The resurgence of Phonics dates from 1955 when Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read was published. Flesch based his arguments in favor of phonics on the work of Leonard Bloomfield, late Sterling Professor of Linguistics at Yale. Bloomfield worked out a method of reading instruction based on linguistic principles, applied it to his own children, and managed to get some independent teachers to try it in the classroom where it worked very well. However, it wasn’t Phonics, as Flesh would have known if he had read his source (why can’t Rudolf read?). Bloomfield attacked the “grunt and whistle” approach of phonics along with the hieroglyphic guessing game of Look-Say, but, more to the point, he offered a workable alternative.

There are, of course, other approaches such as Omar Khayyam Moore’s talking typewriters and the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), but Bloomfield’s technique needs neither Moore’s expensive computer-based instructional system nor the non-English spelling and symbols of ITA.

The Bloomfield method initially limits reading to words with “regular” spelling, and pairs names of letters with pronounceable words and syllables through ingenious exercises. Once the student has mastered these relationships (H A T spells hat), irregular words are introduced in carefully controlled ways, taking advantage of similar word groupings. Since the student has learned no rules, nothing must be unlearned as the irregularities are mastered. And the student never has to go through the synthetic intermediate step of “sounding it out;” he goes directly from spelling to the word, learning both. The only rule one might invent for the Bloomfield method is this: “When in doubt, spell it out.”

Bloomfield, in partnership with Barnhart, the dictionary editor, tried for years to interest major textbook publishers in his reading method. The publishers ran the manuscript past “reading experts” who turned it down because it did not agree with their theories. These theories, however, are very much open to question as Jeanne Chall’s book, Learning the Read: the Great Debate, (McGraw Hill paperback) has demonstrated. But Mrs. Chall brings up another point that seems to me to be significant. Publishers have an investment on the order of $20 million in research and preparation of a graded set of readers, teacher manuals, workbooks, etc., before they even get their books on the market. I would guess that a method that teaches reading in two years with one book would be something of a threat.

In any event, Wayne State University finally published Bloomfield’s method in a one volume edition, including readers, teacher and parent instructions, background material, etc., in 1961, 12 years after Bloomfield’s death. Called Let’s Read, it is a valuable tool for those interested in fighting illiteracy.

Mrs. Chall’s book is also required reading. The conservative columnist, James J. Kilpatrick, has cited it as further evidence for phonics. Had he read it, he might have come to a different conclusion (why can’t James read?). Mrs. Chall simply demonstrates that most “research” in reading methods is virtually worthless, and there is little scientific support for any widely used method. Phonics comes off a little better than Look-Say, but ITA, with a large publisher behind it, seems to show up best in terms of available data. A small group of dedicated Bloomfield followers, however, feels that, with any appreciable backing, the linguistic approach would do even better.

Certainly, something better is needed. The battle is being lost by the children while the adults indulge themselves in orgies of ideology. The battle may even have been lost already. Has anybody read this far?

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Copyright 2006 Lee Goeller. All Rights Reserved.