A local Australian stoush, part of the fireworks that erupted after The Australian’s Higher Education Supplement publication, on April 21st 2004, of the Open Letter to Federal Minister Brendan Nelson signed by 21 well-placed Australian academics. The letter called for an enquiry into actual classroom practices in the teaching of reading to Australian children. For the fuller documentation of this interesting episode, which did result in Nelson setting up such an enquiry in October of 2004 (after the Howard government’s re-election), see the News Archives. Note that the Open Letter was in all probability prompted by Jane Cadzow’s long piece in the Age’s weekend magazine supplement on October 4th 2003. GS

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9407984%255E32522,00.html

Latham stutters over reading revolution

Janet Albrechtsen, Opinion page, The Australian, April 28, 2004

'SHE inspired me," Mark Latham said last week. "She" is Australia's favourite children's author, Mem Fox. Latham told an Adelaide radio station that Fox had told him that "if we read three storybooks a night to our infant children, by the age of five they'll be able to read". And so a policy was born.

In his familiar hunt for slick policy headlines, however, once again Latham shows little interest in the hard yakka of policy detail. Indeed, Latham's literacy policy suggests he does not understand the issues because he has, no doubt unwittingly, created a serious policy blunder.

In drafting his $80 million Read Aloud Australia program, Latham would not have needed to dig very deep to discover that Fox describes herself as "a passionate advocate of whole language" – a faddish method of teaching children how to read. It's there on her online diary. If he dug deeper, he would also have learned that science debunked that theory long ago. Had he dug deeper again, he would have learned that too many teachers, our learned learning professionals, have ignored that science. And so, appointing Fox as his new reading ambassador will be eagerly greeted as affirmation of a teaching method that is supported more by ideology than evidence.

Learning, says Latham, begins on day one of life. He is right, of course. Learning to read is the first rung on the ladder of opportunity. Right again. But he goes awry in suggesting that if you read to your child, they will learn to read. This is the deeply flawed, central tenet of whole language: just as a child naturally learns to speak by about age two if surrounded by language, children also learn to read if immersed in the written word. For years, whole-language proponents derided the teaching of sounds (phonics) as boring 1950s-style rote learning.

As an academic and author of well-loved books such as Koala Lou, Fox has gravitas. Yet she seems to have ignored the science. Even worse, because of her iconic stature, Fox has been allowed to spread the discredited whole-language pedagogy unquestioned. Her online diary suggests that reading aloud "could wipe out illiteracy in one generation". If only it were that easy.

Thirty years of research should have settled the reading wars because all the evidence points one way: to phonics. Children learn best when they learn the sounds in words, like "r-ea-d-i-ng" or "b-oo-k". Learn the sounds and you can decode any word. That is how the brain reads.

Publicly, whole-language advocates will say the reading wars are over. Publicly, they acknowledge the science behind phonics. Yet that has not carried over in any meaningful way into how they teach children to read. How do we know that? Too many children who have not learned to read are dragged off to specialists. But there is no organic problem with their brain. Instead, they are what one specialist calls "instructional casualties" – they were never taught the sounds that make up the words they are expected to read.

The other giveaway is the weird silence that still prevails about phonics, especially in public schools. Many teachers who use a genuine phonics-based system keep their mouths shut, close their classroom doors and just get on with it. Their students invariably read well beyond their age level.

To an outsider, the resistance to teaching children sounds in a systematic way is odd. We accept, indeed admire, rote learning in other areas. Who would question a young Steve Waugh spending hours in the cricket nets, or a young music student at the piano, learning and perfecting the necessary mechanical skills? Yet the one field of endeavour apparently free from the need for basic skills training is reading. Here, learning mechanical skills such as sounds is denounced as "drill and kill".

The nagging question is why does whole language still so dominate the Australian education system? Certainly whole language is easy for teachers. The other reason is that too many teachers have not been trained to teach phonics. How can they teach something they have not been taught? Here the blame rests squarely with the teachers who teach our teachers.

With strong convictions and time and reputations invested in publications, these educators refuse to alter their teaching to reflect the evidence. Why? Because whole language has become an ideology pushed by what one recent study called "celebrity educators". Like Brian Cambourne, Australia's very own celebrity educator, an internationally influential advocate of whole language. In a candid interview a few years ago, Cambourne spoke frankly about the whole-language philosophy.

He rejects functional literacy – the sort that teaches students to read and write well enough to hold down a job, maybe even enjoy literature. It produces "compliant learners", he says. Instead, Cambourne favours something called "literacy for social equity and social justice". It produces students critical of the "current ways power and wealth are distributed in our society" and politicians are terrified of this, he says. Then Cambourne makes a stark admission: "Most of the work I do is based on the political prejudices I have and these must of course impact on what I research, and how and why I teach the way I do."

Encouraging social equity is a fine thing, but children first need to learn to read. The great irony is that poor reading skills are a key contributor to social disadvantage. If science has confirmed that phonics is the best way to teach reading, why aren't these left-wing educators storming the barricades to demand phonics? Sadly, by endorsing Fox, that other whole-language celebrity educator, Latham has given a fillip to a discredited theory. Smart policy? Hardly. Instead of resolving the reading wars, he has, in one fell swoop, reignited them.

It may be a gift for Australia's left-wing teachers unions, but the losers are parents and their children.

From Crikey.com.au. Albrechtsen versus Mem Fox Thurs, 29 April, 04

12. Mem Fox fires back at Albrechtsen : The Australian's Janet Albrechtsen got stuck into Mark Latham and his Read-Aloud program in her column yesterday. Read it here. This morning we noticed this amusing fightback from Iron Bark's inspiration, children's author Mem Fox, on the Oz letters page:

“Subtleties of phonics”

See Janet (Opinion, 28/4) reed.

See Janet wright.

See Janet fail to understand the subtleties of fonix.

See Janet fail to state that only 50 per cent of the English language can be decoded

phonically.

See Janet fail to note that phonics is a pillar of balanced whole language teaching.

See Janet fail to discover that no matter which reading method schools adopt, it is

universally acknowledged that children who are read aloud to for 10 minutes a day, from birth to five, significantly improve their educational potential, and many learn to read before school without a single lesson.

See Janet fail to grasp that the role of Mark Latham's Read Aloud Ambassador is to

encourage parents to read aloud to their pre-school children – particularly in the first years of life – not to set the reading curriculum for the entire country.

See Janet take more care in future.

Mem Fox, Brighton, SA

Glynne Sutcliffe answers Mem Fox

Mem Fox is, no doubt at all, a wonderful woman, an inspiring story teller, and one whose dedication to the welfare of children is clear.

Unfortunately when she sets up to advise us how to teach children to read, she has climbed on the wrong band wagon. Speaking from atop its platform she leads us into grievous error.

Hopelessly over-committed to ‘whole language’, she tries very hard to acknowledge the validity of the research that categorically supports teaching children to read by using phonics. To understand how reading works, children need to know the key to the code by which we transform speech (sounds) into print (visual symbols). Phonics alone provides this.

Her slick ‘answers’ to Janet Albrechtsen’s absolutely correct observations need demystifying.

1) “Read and write” versus “reed and wright” are differentiated by the use of well-known spelling conventions attributable to the history of the English language.

2) All phonics instruction includes attention to the phonics (sounds) of every spelling convention.

3) All spelling conventions are part and parcel of any phonics program

4) Mem Fox’s claim that only 50% of the English language can be decoded phonically is countered by the claims of others (who count phonically regular spelling conventions as phonically decipherable) that 98% of the English language can be decoded phonically. (Problems arise mostly with often used small words like ‘one’ and ‘was’)

5) It is good to know that Mem Fox thinks children should be able to read before they go to school.

6) If Mark Latham wants parents to love their children and read stories to them, that is wonderful. He should not promote this admirable endeavor as an ‘early reading’ strategy.

7) A distinction should be made between motivation and skills acquisition.

And to end with a question : Should Janet take more care, or should Mem acquire a little more scholarship?

Mem Fox was at one time a member of the teaching staff of the Education Faculty at Flinders University, which is to say, one of those who teach the teachers how to teach.

I recollect that Flinders’ CEO Barbara Ferguson once threatened me with a defamation action if I didn’t remove my criticism of Lynn Richardson from the Early Reading Play School web site. Lynn Richardson is another stunning example of professional expertise, another member of the Flinders University Education Faculty. She had gone public in a radio interview with Philip Satchell, claiming that phonics teachers didn’t know what they were talking about, because, apart from the letter ‘A’ having the sound it does in the word ‘cat’, there were eight other distinguishable sounds attributable to the letter ‘A’.

If you don’t know why this is stupid, you were probably taught to read by a whole language advocate.

If this letter isn’t published it is probably because the editor is in thrall to the Australian cultural habit of kow-towing to experts instead of thinking for one’s self.

(NB - The Letters Editor at The Australian did not publish this letter)

Back