Basically finished with the semester this week, and so I finally had time to listen to “Sold a Story.” This is an NPR podcast about how reading is taught in elementary schools, the argument of which is, vastly simplified:
—A popular and these days all-but-hegemonic trend in childhood reading instruction has basically cut out specific instruction and practice in phonics in favor of, basically, context clues. Instead of figuring out that the word says “light” because you saw a whole lot of “-ight” = “ite” words and your brain habitually recognizes such words, you figure out that it says “light” because there’s a picture of a lightbulb on the page and the other words in the sentence include “turn,” “on,” and “the.”
—We have science that shows that this is definitely wrong, and that kids definitely need instruction in phonics.
—The people behind the recent, wrong trend have made a lot of money off of it, and are not going to give up without a fight.
The podcast was convincing and disturbing. Obviously, I have further questions,