READ, DAMN IT!

Education blogger Jan Resseger published a particularly fine piece on April 26, reporting the alarming backward trend toward the “Read by third grade or else!” policies of the recent past.  As she convincingly argues, such an approach is particularly harmful as we emerge from the pandemic.  What kids need most is social and emotional reconnection, not the humiliation and stigma that accompany academic retention.

The angst over reading drives what is arguably the most wrongheaded and damaging among a great many wrongheaded and damaging approaches to education practice and policy.  

When considering the importance of natural development and the negative consequences of early academic work, reading is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of schools. Reading is an invaluable skill and the emphasis on reading is understandable. But a conventional, rigorous approach in early childhood is neither necessary nor useful.

The brain maturation that allows reading to take hold is varied. Any teacher or parent knows that some children will begin to read (or appear to begin to read) by age 4 or 5, while others will not do so until age 7, 8 or later.  

It doesn’t matter. Early readers are not better readers, better students, or better people. Delays in reading may be but are rarely related to a learning anomaly, but patience is the first line of intervention. Parents or teachers who expect all 6 or 7 year-olds to begin reading are unrealistic.  Not only is the anxiety fruitless; it sets in motion a complex set of emotional reactions to learning, school, teachers and parents that may take a lifetime to fully overcome. All for nothing.

In my time as head of the Calhoun School, I would accentuate this point to prospective parents during admission events.  I would ask them to respond by raising hands in response to a query about when their children took first walking steps.  9 months?   A hand or two.  10 months?  A few more.  11 months?  More yet.  A year?  Quite a few.  13 months?  Even more.  I  stopped at “15 months or beyond,” recognizing that few parents seeking admission to an expensive private school would volunteer that their darlings were very late readers.

I then asked if anyone was surprised by the range.  Of course not.  For bold punctuation I would ask how they would react to a parent of a one year-old child repeatedly yanking her up from a sidewalk, tiny knees bleeding, and screaming, “WALK, DAMN IT!”  Scowling at a late reader is equivalently harmful. READ, DAMN IT! 

The ages that children begin walking can be plotted on a beautifully symmetrical bell curve.  Reading is a different maturation process, but can be plotted on a similar bell curve.  Everyone understands that early walkers are not superior walkers later in life.  In fact one study showed that world-class middle distance runners tended to be later walkers!  I would also ask if any parents in the room had employed a walking tutor if their child had not stood up and walked on his first birthday.

This is not some mushy progressive theory, as some testing and accountability zealots might argue.

Many other nations, the much-touted Finland as one example, don’t teach reading until age 7. Other schools in Europe wait until 8.   Abundant evidence shows that these students read just as well or better than children who began reading instruction at much earlier ages.  So what’s the hurry?

Sebastian Suggate, a researcher at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has done extensive research. Suggate examined data from 54 countries and found "no association between school entry age ... and reading achievement at age 15.”  I particularly enjoy how Suggate describes the effects of premature reading instruction:

“It is like) watering a garden before a rainstorm; the earlier watering is rendered undetectable by the rainstorm, the watering wastes precious water, and the watering detracts the gardener from other important preparatory groundwork.”

One of the most compelling critics of the mechanized, early approach to reading is Canadian Frank Smith, a proponent of “whole language.” Among his many books, Unspeakable Acts, Unnatural Practices: Flaws and Fallacies in Scientific Reading Instruction provides a powerful argument for a progressive, naturalistic approach to reading (and all other learning). 

The partners Ken and Yetta Goodman, both Emeriti Professors at the University of Arizona, are notable among many others, including linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, who have advanced the whole language cause. They are following the earlier theoretical path walked by John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky, Jerome Bruner and others. The intellectual heft of this approach to reading and learning is considerable, yet schools continue to engage in the Unspeakable Acts and Unnatural Practices that Smith debunked.

I don’t suggest that early experience is irrelevant. There is little doubt that a rich language environment is an important precondition to literacy.  Reading to children, having books and large letters to view at home and in school, and having real conversations with toddlers are all important parts of a foundation for literacy.

A widely publicized study from 1995, conducted by University of Kansas psychologists Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, introduced the idea of a 30 million-word advantage enjoyed by children in privileged communities. By pre-school age they had been exposed to nearly triple the number of spoken words as less privileged peers. 

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a brilliant psychologist, author and international expert on language, is among several researchers cited in a 2014 article in The New York Times  indicating that the number of words was actually not the critical variable. It was the conversational context of the language, especially between and among family members, which mattered. This is another affirmation of the work of Jerome Bruner and others who understood the importance of learning written language in social context.

The language deficit experienced by children who live in poverty may be real , but the answer is not phonics instruction in pre-school. The answer lies in addressing poverty, providing jobs and livable wages for parents, helping to keep families and communities intact, and offering good health care (including pre-natal education for parents), all of which will contribute to giving children the foundation needed for learning.

Much attention is given to research that purports to demonstrate that late readers fall further behind in school with each passing year.  This observation spawned the absurd national policy declaring that every 3rd grader be a fluent reader – as though a national policy can actually change the reality of children! 

While it is true that a late reader may have difficulty in school, it is not because of some intrinsic problem with delayed reading; it is because subsequent curriculum has reading by 3rd grade as a prerequisite. 

Kids who can’t read well by 3rd grade may feel left out, frustrated and alienated; they will internalize the idea that they are stupid, and may increasingly fulfill that sad prophecy.

That’s the worst thing we can do to kids who have endured the stressors of the pandemic.