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The Writing’s On the Wall
HT to Jo-Anne for this sobering article from the Telegraph in the UK. The great phonics debate continues over the pond, despite some of the most convincing evidence from UK reading research showing that systematic phonics instruction is the way to go. SQE has often cited the Clackmannanshire study, and other similar studies, for example. Diane Pearson’s article is a response to a white paper has just been released in the UK which calls for a complete overhaul of how teachers are trained. UK Education Secretary, Michael Gove, proposes, for instance, that teachers be trained outside of the usual faculties of education and do more in-school, hands-on training similar to how medical interns train.
Diane Pearson, recalls her own experience as a novice teacher thirty years before who was instructed during her teacher-training days not to help her student sound out words. “We don’t do that here,” she was told, but was to encourage “kids to ‘become active constructors of their own learning.” Of course we know the disastrous results that ensued decades later. Fast-forward thirty years and she notes that the current crop of novice teachers who learned under the same ineffective methods are now not even aware of their own ignorance when it comes to language. It’s a case of the blind leading the blind.
Pearson adds her solutions for teacher training in reading instruction: “Rid the Education department of anyone clinging to discredited theories. Make the failure to teach phonics in primary schools illegal.” SQE says, hurrah to that.
While most educrats wring their hands over why boys don’t like to read, Pearson writes, “Point out to your critics there is nothing that puts a child off reading quite as much as the inability to read.” She concludes, “At long last, the writing is on the wall. The tragedy is that so many cannot read it.”
Problem is, it’s the educrats who can’t see it either.
It is becoming more and more apparent that Canada has a need for a Federal Department of Education-we are the only ones without a reform movement-SQE needs more support!