IN HIS 2011 book, School-Induced Dyslexia and How It Deforms a Child’s Brain, the late author and education reformer Samuel L. Blumenfeld argued that the whole language or “progressive” method of reading instruction had caused a massive increase in illiteracy, especially among blacks, and a skyrocketing number of diagnosed cases of “dyslexia.”

Elementary school children in public schools are taught to read today by memorizing a few dozen “sight,” mostly one-syllable, words. The traditional phonics method involves sounding out the letters and gradually progressing to bigger words.

According to Phyllis Schlafly:

The change from teaching school children to read by phonics and replacing phonics with the so-called “whole word” or “look-say” method was fully debunked in the landmark book “Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolph Flesch in 1955. Unfortunately, the truth had no impact on public schools, which stuck with the new method because it was part of “progressive” education. It was brought to Teachers College at Columbia University with a $3 million grant from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who then sent four of his five sons to be educated by Dewey’s progressive ideas.

Blumenfeld was thus not alone in contending that the whole language approach had been a disaster, causing “learning disabilities” and behavior problems. Literacy rates among black students especially declined. His 2011 book includes this testimony from the teacher, Paul Lukawski:

I have been a high school English teacher for 14 years. I remember in college wanting to know how to teach children to read. I went to a teacher college established in 1910. The school had one of the oldest teacher colleges in the country. Its College of Education enjoyed an excellent reputation. I asked three different professors how do you teach reading. I received three different vague responses.

After I completed my second year of teaching, I realized that my students could not read. I taught grades nine through twelve. The second year, I had three classes of ninth graders. I assigned the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird for them to read. I realized that most of my students could not read the novel’s literate narrative.

It was during this time that I heard Samuel Blumenfeld interviewed on shortwave radio. At this time the Rodney King verdict had come in and there was rioting in the streets of L.A. He said that the reason the people were rioting was that they did not have jobs. They did not have jobs because they were illiterate. He said you could tell they were illiterate by listening to the lyrics of the songs they listened to and by the way they talked.

I was intrigued by what he said because it verified my experience as a high school teacher. He then said the schools were at fault because of the way they taught reading. I was again intrigued because of my experience in college trying to determine how to teach children to read. I was never taught it in college.

Mr. Blumenfeld had made two provocative statements on the radio, but I knew them to be true because of my personal experience. I then decided to buy a couple of his books, including Alpha-Phonics. My third year of teaching, I had a class of ninth graders that consisted of the worst performing students in the school. These students were in the dropout prevention program. They were waiting until they turned sixteen to drop out of school. I teach in our state’s poorest county and our district at that time had a high drop out rate. Also in the class were several students from Mexico and one from Haiti. These students were speakers of other languages (ESOL). Their only problem was that they had a limited understanding ofEnglish. Everyday in the class was a struggle with disruptive behavior; and if I could finish class without a student being sent to the office for discipline problems, I considered it a success.

The students had chronic discipline problems; they had trouble with the law, every problem you could imagine. After two months of getting absolutely nowhere with the students I decided that I would try an experiment. I was going to use Alpha-Phonics beginning with lesson one to teach those that wanted to learn how to read. I told the class that those that wanted to learn would sit on this side of the room, and those that did not were to sit on the opposite side of the room. The only rule was a student could not interfere with the Alpha-Phonics lesson.

Until this time, everyone sat scattered around the back of the room, as I did not have a seating chart. Any student, when given the option, will not sit in the front of the room with the teacher. The stage being set, I began the first day by reading the directions from the “Teachers Manual” to Alpha-Phonics and beginning with lesson one. I wondered what response I would get.

I was shocked by the response of the students. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened. If someone had told me what would happen I would not have believed them. With the exception of a few students who sat on the other side of the room because they did not want to participate, all of the students followed along as I wrote the lessons on the board. I would write the lesson on the board, read it out loud, and then have them read. The students leaned forward in their desks and followed along.

The next day the students all sat in the front of the room. Everyone would raise their hand and want to read. Indeed, after the first few days, the students would fuss among themselves to read out aloud. They fought over who could write the lessons on the board. Everyone wanted to read aloud. Everyone sat in front of the room. There were no discipline problems. The entire class had been transformed. I had discovered a disturbing truth.

We worked through the book; and about halfway through the book, we began reading Sounder and The Old Man and the Sea. One youth in the class who could not read and who had been a behavior problem told me that every night he would sit with his dad as his dad read the sports section of the papers. He said he always wanted to read the paper with his dad, but he could not because he did not know how to read. A few weeks after starting Alpha-Phonics. he entered the class one day and told me that as he was driving down the road he began to sound out the words on the signs. He was excited because he was never able to do that before. [School Induced Dyslexia, p. 75]

Blumenfeld’s book can be read in full here.

— Comments —

Hurricane Betsy writes:

I think there may be such a thing as a natural born reader. I was one (didn’t have to be taught) and my son is the same. He just followed the words as I read storybooks while he sat beside me and looked at the words as I spoke them. Also, I gave him a large poster with the letters of the alphabet. Underneath each letter was a drawing of an object that started with that letter. A – apple. B – bread. C – cow. Etc. It all just took off for him. Long words, short words, easy words, hard words. He is an adult now and has no problems with reading.

So, I can’t rightly say that he was taught phonics or whole-words. My non method sounds more like whole word system, but only because the need for standard phonics was not there.

What do you all think? What are your experiences with teaching your children to read?

Laura writes:

I am not an expert, but I believe everyone learns to read phonetically even if they are taught in a whole language way. We learn what sounds different letters produce and then proceed to new words by stringing them together. You may not have been consciously using phonetics with your son but he probably figured it out as you read aloud to him.

My older son learned to read at the age of two by this intuitive phonetics approach and with no great effort on our part. Yes, he was a natural born reader but even if he had not been he would have come to read this way at a later age. I taught our younger son to read phonetically. Some children just pick it up as they are read to, and others need to focus on it.

Teaching a child to read is something every parent can do — except in extraordinary cases. It’s fun, like playing a game. However, it’s important not to force it on a child who is under seven if he doesn’t seem ready.

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