Thinking about Reading

I’ve been challenged recently to think, really think hard, about everything I know about how children learn to read.  This is something that I have devoted my professional life to, something I have loved learning about, teaching, analyzing, and observing for many years.  Language is fascinating.  This code of lines and circles that we’ve developed to communicate without speaking is fascinating.  What I’m now discovering is that is also basic and human.

I’ve been thinking a lot about reading because my four-year-old is on the brink of it.  A lot of parents put a lot of pressure on themselves and on their children to learn letters, numbers, and words very early.  If your kid can identify the letters of the alphabet before age 3, you have some serious bragging rights on the playground.  I certainly don’t have that bragging right.  My daughter can spell her name and the word “stop”, and can identify maybe half of the letters by name, but none of the sounds.  But she loves books. She loves to be read to. She loves books on CD.  I’ve seen her pick up just about anything with print on it, move her finger under a line of text (left to right and top to bottom), and speak nonsense.  She spends anywhere between half and hour and 2 hours looking at books in bed all by herself before she goes to sleep.   Now I’m not saying that she’s any smarter or better than those kids who know the alphabet already, but this is one thing I’m not worried about (and those of you who know me well understand what I’m saying).  As I read more and observe more I’m beginning to decide that I want my kids to love books and love reading more than I want them to possess reading as a skill.  This passage from Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity by Elizabeth Gold really spoke to me:

I have not even begin to talk about the American confusion about the intellectual life, and how that confusion has been exacerbated by our adoration of new technology and the computer, which is seen not as a tool, but somehow, as a cure.  Now don’t get be wrong: computer knowledge is a useful and practical thing to possess.  But to replace the culture of the book—the concept that anything worth learning is both difficult and time-consuming, but pays the learner back with all kids of contradictory pleasures—with the concept that in our busy, multitasking world, knowledge is something that should be broken down in to easily digested nuggets and “skills” is a mistake.  Efficient such a way of learning might be.  Better it is not.  And if you don’t believe me, check our country’s reading scores.  The more guaranteed-to-work computers and magic programs they drag in the worse a lot of students do.  As for me, I believe not in “reading skills” but in literature….

I see so many children parked in front of “educational” TV programs or iphone apps; programs that will teach children letters, shapes, numbers, I don’t dispute that.  But do they teach children that reading is worth while?  That reading can be frustrating and interesting and fun?  That books themselves are communication devices?  My mother told me recently that she has often thought that anyone who lives near a good library is not poor.  In a time when we think so much about the “achievement gap” and the inequality and injustice in the American school system, I think this is truly wise.  Schools focus more and more on teaching students reading “skills” that are completely divorced from actual books, which is sadly ironic when you think about how much these reading curricula cost. 

        I spent countless hours in graduate school and in teaching trying to deconstruct this mental process we call “reading,” which most adults do as effortlessly as speaking, in order to identify and teach the component skills.   Most teachers are familiar with the assessment tool known as “running records” or “miscue analysis.”  As a child is reading, the teacher follows along and makes a check mark for each word read correctly.  Each word read incorrectly is notated, with marks for false starts, numerous tries, and appeals for help from the teacher.  When the book or passage is done, the words read correctly and incorrectly are taken as a percentage of all the words in the book, and all mistakes are carefully analyzed to find out why the child is making those mistakes and what skill or phonics sound needs to be taught.  This is truly a science.  Now I don’t mean to say that this method is bad or wrong; I have found it to be incredibly useful in teaching children who are struggling in reading.  But is it necessary, or, perhaps, should it be necessary?  I’ve just begun John Holt’s Learning All the Time, and while I certainly don’t agree with everything I’ve read so far, I’m beginning to understand what I think is his basic premise: learning to read is natural, and when children are exposed to books and print early and often, easy.  Breaking down this process, which comes so naturally to adults as to become hard to teach, seems ludicrous when you compare it to learning to walk, or maybe speak.  When a baby is born, the parents don’t parents don’t teach her to speak.  She picks it up by being spoken to, and by hearing language all around her.  Can you imagine having to break each word into its constituent sounds, manipulating the baby’s mouth and tongue to teach her how to form those sounds? 

When I interview applicants for a reading tutor position at the tutoring company I work for I like to give them a little test.  I write the vowels on a piece of paper: a, e, i, o, u, and I ask them to tell me the short sounds of each of these vowels.  Often they start by saying “A,” as in the name of the letter. I stop them and say, “no, not the letter name, the sound it makes.” I’d say probably 90% of the applicants can’t tell me the short sounds of all five vowels.  Go ahead and try it now.  Did you get it?  How long did it take you?  The answer, in case you’re wondering if you’re my star pupil, is: a, as in apple, eh, as in elephant, i as in igloo, ah as in octopus, and uh as in umbrella.  My point is not that anyone who doesn’t know that is stupid , it’s that it’s hard to come up with these sounds!  Why?  Because we don’t use them in isolation like that. Unless you run into a word you don’t know, you’re never sounding out words.  You take them in as a whole, quickly and without thinking.  You have an incredible vocabulary of these words, what teachers call “sight words” because you know them on sight. 

Now this is a tremendous debate in education, and my point is that the phonics versus whole language versus balanced literacy arguments are, perhaps, moot, or at least unimportant to me right now.  Maybe we don't have to break words into their constituent sounds or give children endless flashcards and whole words to memorize.  Maybe all we need to do is read.  Read an awful lot.  Read to them.  Read to ourselves, while children watch and play.  Read novels, brochures, signs, newspapers, magazines, instructions. 

But then again, this is something I’m still struggling with and my views are still evolving.   Is it enough to absorb this code we use to communicate?  Do children need to be able to identify the short vowel sounds so they can figure out new words, words that haven’t been memorized, are unfamiliar, and can’t be understood in context?  What about learning to read in other languages, when the learner hasn’t been steeped in that language they way they have their native tongue.  And how does a child learn to write?  These are questions I’m still pondering.  After seeing so many children struggling to learn how to read, even children who do live in a print and book rich environment, I’m not quite ready to give up the idea that some aspects of reading have to be taught explicitly.  But how and when is the best way to do that?   I’d love to know what you think…