Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 20, 1992 TAG: 9201200222
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Betty Price
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
JOHNNY STILL CAN'T READ
THROUGHOUT the years, millions of illiterates have come out of the public-school system, and the public has been given countless "reasons" for reading inability. These range from heredity to socioeconomic deprivation to "grandmother smokes." One textbook I studied quoted more than 200 reasons why a child might have difficulty learning to read.As for teaching "new tricks," the concept of whole language that many advocate today is anything but new. It has been around for a long time (almost 70 years) under the guises of Look-Say, Look and Guess, or Dick and Jane. But whole language is not organized. Children are allowed, even encouraged to "invent" their own language and spelling - meaning anything goes.
Consider a portion from this "winning" essay of a first-grader, as printed in the June 1991 issue of Better Homes and Gardens:
"My grate grate grate grate grandpa wrktd in the undergrownd rarode. The undergrowd raroe did not have inything to do whith a rarode. In fakt it wasin't undengrownd eether."
Since the language has already been "invented," I can find no plausible explanation or research to support allowing children to "reinvent" it. And in the whole-language approach, the teacher, too, is relatively free to invent and/or develop his or her own program, free to even abandon the basal reading text.
Further, this approach emphasizes comprehension before breaking it down. Children are given initial "aids," instead of being taught how to reason and figure out what sentences and concepts mean.
At the same time, we seem to be ignoring the relatively new and available research concerning the differences in learning patterns of boys and girls, in the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Four out of five children who have reading problems are boys. Research seems to bear out that they would learn better with phonics, because it is analytical and appeals to the "put together and take apart" energies of the male brain.
The science of phonology is systematic, analytical, requires structure - and takes much more training for teaching than most colleges offer and more than Virginia's education system requires. And, unfortunately, it is not dwelled on in Roanoke Valley schools, and has not been for years.
At one time, back in the 1960s, one special school in Roanoke City, one in Roanoke County and one in Botetourt County were selected to conduct three-year test programs in phonetic reading courses.
Well, I saw the results. These programs were so far superior to the then- current Look-Say series that I automatically assumed that all valley schools would soon be using these programs. But, what happened? When special funding for the trial programs ran out, so did the successes that had begun.
In other words, though evidence was in hand that there was a better way for teaching, it was for naught!
Contrary to the educationalists of this world, words are not "born" whole. They are put together with a combination of consonants and vowels, the latter being short (as in "back"), long ("bake"), diphthong ("bawl"), or compound split ("poet"). Our language has a wonderful rhythm which enables us to teach syllabication systematically, as well as how to ascertain where the accents should fall. One can easily be taught to figure out that the word is hu-MI-di-ty and not HUM-i-di-ty, and tar-AN-tu-la, not tar-an-TU-la.
Clapping words out without telling children that the number of syllables depends on the number of vowel sounds is like telling children they have to spell "cat" with a "c" and "kitten" with a "k" - without explaining why. In fact, the rule for that particular spelling pattern is so terrific that children can apply it to 2,000 words and encounter only 10 exceptions. Why don't we unlock these interesting secrets for children? Why shouldn't we teach them the intricacies and nuances of the most exciting and fascinating language in the world?
Controlled vocabulary, sight words and high-intensity lists may appear to get a student off to a fast start, but anyone who is involved with testing assessments knows that this "success" begins to break down by the end of the second or third grade. With more than 2,000 new words being absorbed into our vocabulary each year, how will one ever catch up at the rate we are going and with the system that we are using?
It is absolutely heartbreaking to observe a perfectly healthy, normal/bright child struggling needlessly, or becoming totally disenchanted with reading because of the archaic way that we teach it in most American schools. The teaching methods that we now use are close to ideograms of 3,000 years ago.
Worse is to see children shunted off into learning-disability or special reading classes where they become convinced that this means there's really something wrong with them. Don't doubt that this happens. It does, for sure! And, sadly, sometimes a child is placed in a special class because the class needs the student - not because the student needs the class. This was admitted to me by an appointee in the U. S. Department of Education.
Millions of Americans are losing jobs because of inadequate language skills that are necessary to keep up with high technology. Millions more are finding it difficult to get jobs in the first place - because their applications reveal language deficiencies at the onset. Still millions of others are in the streets, in the jails or in other institutions because they have never tasted success - even in schools. And billions of dollars are being spent by industries and taxpayers for special programs that attempt to correct the illiteracy that the school system is fostering. It is an impossible task!
It's true that parents have a great deal to do with the success or failure of their children's academics. However, today's parents are yesterday's school children. If an educational system failed the parents by not insisting that they learn to read before being promoted from one grade into the next, if this system did not motivate and interest them in the wonders of learning and the joys of accomplishment, then many of today's parents are unmotivated, possibly illiterate, and can hardly be a guiding light for their children today. It follows that today's children won't be a beacon for the children of the future.
Illiteracy touches us all. How can the American public sit still much longer and allow the public school system to have the "freedom" to do whatever it wants, regardless of the results?
It is the system's responsibility to make certain that its students leave its graduating stages with an education, with diplomas that mean something. Otherwise, our nation will remain at risk.
Betty G. Price, who has a masters degree in linguistics, is director of Professional Reading Services in Roanoke.