MARK LATHAM, MEM FOX, JANET ALBRECHTSEN

GLYNNE SUTCLIFFE, AND OTHERS, INCLUDING

BRENDAN NELSON, DAVID KEMP, LORRAINE COLLINS & JAN TURBILL

 

A case study in the conduct of intellectual debate and discussion in Australia

 

Glynne Sutcliffe

Adelaide, May 2004

 

Reading is now once more in the spotlight of public attention – and some have asked, “What books should we read to our young children?”

 

This begs the question, because the current public discussion of the desirability of reading stories to children is not based on the sheer pleasure of the activity, but on its utility in teaching children to read. To ask what books we should read to our children assumes (in the context of the current discussion) that reading books to them will teach them to read.

 

The issue of how best to teach children to read is therefore a logically prior discussion that we need to have – and which we should not allow to be passed over by assuming the answers are known, or that those who currently dictate what teaching methods are to be used in our schools know what they are talking about.

 

What has brought the issue of reading once more to the forefront?  There have been two prompts.

 

The first came from Mark Latham, who has astutely identified reading as a key issue of concern to parents (voters). Inspired by Mem Fox’s assurance that all you need to do to ensure that young children learn to read is to read them “three stories a day”, he has promised to give every new born baby three books, as a present from the Federal Government, in the hope this will get the message through to parents. I imagine that book publishers are going to vote for Latham, along with writers of children’s stories. Parents may or may not be impressed, given that Mem Fox’s formula, without rereading the same story, would require about five thousand books per child, over the five years between birth and five years of age. If we offset this number by the common and useful practice of rereading the same story over and over, Latham is still asking parents to get hold of some hundreds of story books.  If they take up the idea perhaps the children’s sections of public libraries will get the greatest boost. Well, it is a nice idea, and parents who take it up will get their rewards, though not necessarily in the way Mem Fox has envisaged.

 

The second prompt came from a letter published in the Higher Education Supplement in The Australian on the 21^st of April this year. The letter had twenty-six signatories, all academics with a professional interest in children who had become reading failures. This letter argued for the urgent necessity, right now, of a review of classroom practices in the teaching of reading - given that very good reasons existed to believe that the research findings on best practice were being ignored.

 

Both of these positions are different responses to the apparently never-to-be-concluded debate about whole language versus phonics. Mem Fox is a lifelong advocate of whole language, who is now in an awkward position given that phonics has received the support of education researchers. 

 

On the other side are the twenty-six respected academic signatories whose common interest lies in their involvement in mopping up some of the more spectacular human disasters produced by the use of the whole language paradigm as a guide to practical teaching.

 

Both Latham and the academics, following up Jane Cadzow’s long and detailed cover story in The Age’s Good Weekend supplement of October 4^th last year, have thus done much to spread public awareness that the issue of whole language versus phonics is not, in fact settled (as it should be). 

 

Defending whole language is defending the indefensible, but those who have a heavy career investment in the whole language methodology perhaps have little choice but to hang in there, asserting that they really do use phonics, as part of a ‘balanced’ approach to teaching reading (or as below and more recently, an ‘eclectic’ approach).

 

There is an interesting aspect to this interminable debate beyond the arguments about teaching methods and curriculum, and that is how some opinions (including mine) are frequently derailed onto a loop that is difficult for the public to access.

 

I have therefore compiled a set of key documents to enable interested observers not only to read up on the issues, but also to watch the way the game is played in Australia. 

 

A number of people have remarked how good we are at not hearing ideas that challenge the ideas of those who have positions of institutional power and media-protected authority.  It is possible that Cohn’s “Origins of Scientific Revolutions” should be mandatory reading for all Year 12 students. It is also possible that thinking for yourself should be more strongly emphasized in the High School curriculum. We function largely as a nation of parrots and sheep. And it is deplorable. 

 

 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9339714%5E12332,00.html

 

HIGHER EDUCATION

Letter to Dr Nelson: A sound approach to reading skills

April 21, 2004

 

This is an edited version of the letter sent to the federal Education Minister

DEAR Brendan Nelson,

 

As researchers, psychologists, linguists and educators who have studied the processes underlying the development of reading and who are familiar with the scientific research literature relating to the acquisition of reading, we are writing to you to express our concerns with the way in which reading is typically being taught in Australian schools.

 

We would like particularly to draw to your attention to the continuing discrepancy between the model of reading development that forms the basis for most of our school curriculums and teaching methods, and the model of reading development that is emerging as a result of the research into reading that has been undertaken during the past 20 to 30 years.

 

Reading instruction in Australia is based largely on the whole-language approach, which makes the assumption that learning to read is like learning to speak and requires only exposure to a rich language environment without any specific teaching of the alphabetic system and letter-sound relationships. However, the research on reading development has shown clearly that this is not the case and that the ability to read is a complex learned skill that requires specific teaching.

 

In the US there has been widespread public debate about different approaches to the teaching of reading, which has led to a series of government-funded reports designed to examine the scientific evidence relating to how children learn to read and what strategies are most effective in teaching reading. All of these reports have come up with essentially the same conclusion -- that mastery of the alphabetic code is essential to proficient reading and that methods of instruction that teach this code directly are more effective than those that do not.

 

In Australia there has been little public debate about different approaches to the teaching of reading, and little change in teaching practices that during the past 20 years have been based predominantly on the beliefs and assumptions associated with the whole-language approach.

 

The claim has been made that the dichotomy between different approaches to the teaching of reading is false and that elements of both the main approaches (whole language and phonics) are used to teach children how to read.

 

Although there have been initiatives in some states and schools to modify teaching methods to incorporate a greater emphasis on phonological awareness and phonics instruction, our view is that there is as yet little evidence of a significant shift in the fundamental assumptions underlying the teaching of reading in Australia. The view that children learn to read by being exposed to literacy activities from an early age persists and systematic teaching of the alphabetic principle is therefore believed to be unnecessary since most children will pick it up through exposure to reading. In cases where children do not learn to read, their failure is blamed on their parents or their background rather than on ineffective teaching methods. The children who are most disadvantaged by ineffective teaching are those from less advantaged backgrounds and whose parents are unable to make up for the deficiencies of the school by teaching their children how to read.

 

We believe the time has come for a review of the approaches to reading instruction adopted in our schools and a critical examination of the assumptions underlying these approaches. We ask that consideration be given to setting up an independent review to examine the research evidence relating to the teaching of reading and the extent to which present practices are based on this evidence.

 

In view of the entrenched positions of many people within the education establishment, we believe that such a review should seek advice from a wide range of people, including those with knowledge and expertise in the fields of language development, cognitive science and reading research.

 

Yours sincerely,

Vicki Anderson,  Director, Department of psychology, Royal Children's Hospital, University of Melbourne

Judy Bowey, Reader, School of psychology, University of Queensland

Lesley Bretherton, Deputy director/clinical co-ordinator, Department of psychology, Royal Children's Hospital, Parkville, Victoria.

Ruth Brunsdon, Clinical neuropsychologist, Rehabilitation development and developmental cognitive neuropsychology research unit, Children's Hospital at Westmead

Anne Castles, Senior lecturer, Department of psychology, University of Melbourne

Max Coltheart, Australian Research Council Federation fellow and scientific director, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

Veronika Coltheart, Psychology department, MCCS

Linda Cupples, Director, Speech Hearing and Language Research Centre, Macquarie University

Marion M. de Lemos Honorary fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research

Ruth Fielding-Barnsley, Lecturer in learning support, School of learning and professional studies, Queensland University of Technology

Janet Fletcher, Director, Child Study Centre, School of psychology, University of Western Australia

Steve Heath, Child Study Centre, University of Western Australia

John Hogben, Senior lecturer, Child Study Centre, University of Western Australia

Teresa Iacono Senior research fellow,  Centre for Developmental Disability Health Victoria,  Monash University

Pamela Joy, Senior clinical neuropsychologist Child development unit, Head, Developmental cognitive neuropsychology research unit, Children's Hospital at Westmead

Genevieve McArthur, National Health and Medical Research Council Howard Florey, Centenary fellow,  MCCS

Philip Newall, Audiology section, Speech, Hearing and Language Research Centre, Macquarie University

Lyndsey Nickels, QEII research fellow, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

Karen Smith-Lock, Research fellow, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University

Geoffrey W. Stuart, Senior fellow, Department of psychology, University of Melbourne

Kevin Wheldall, Director, Macquarie University Special Education Centre, Macquarie University

Brian Byrne, Professor of psychology, University of New England

Kerry Hempenstall, Senior lecturer, Psychology and disability studies, RMIT University

Suze Leito, Speech pathologist and lecturer (human communication science), School of psychology Curtin University of Technology

Kristen Pammer, School of psychology, Australian National University

Margot Prior, Department of psychology, University of Melbourne, Royal Children's Hospital

 

MEDIA AND GENERAL RELEASE : (OH, HEAD-CLUTCHING DEJA VU!)  THE READING WARS !!!! AGAIN !!!!

Re : recent correspondence in The Australian, and associated documents - concerning whole language and phonics, and Mark Latham and Mem Fox

Date : Thursday 6th May 2004

Contact : Glynne Sutcliffe, 08 8270 3548
     
Dear recipient,
You are being sent this email, and the attached documents, because you are thought likely to be interested in the questions surrounding the way reading is taught in Australian schools, and in the debate initiated by a letter published in The Australian’s Higher Education supplement on 21st April 2004.
 
In this letter a number of well-placed academics asked for a review of classroom norms governing the teaching of reading, on the grounds that such a review would reveal a continued reliance on whole language teaching practices when research has conclusively demonstrated that children need (systematic and initial) phonics instruction.
 
The issue is vital. It is a scandal that it remains an issue so long after the right answers have been clearly and widely available.  It is worse than unfortunate that Mark Latham will give whole language a whole new lease of life, through giving credibility to Mem Fox’s charming but erroneous views.  It seems Janet Albrechtsen has also become aware of this danger. Her column of April 28th is lucidly accurate on this point. Mem Fox’s riposte is smart but empty.
 
Please note that standard whole language fightback is implied in the remarks both of Kevin Wheldall and Paul March, as quoted by Dani Cooper. Wheldall’s notion that phonics is most clearly useful for kids in trouble is a furphy. March’s assertion that most classroom teachers are already using phonics is precisely what is being denied.

The most recent volly fired in this latest phase of the battle, a piece by Marion Meiers (senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research and a member of the national council of the Australian Literacy Educators Association – now what have these guys been doing for the last 3-4 decades?) follows this defence strategy : “Don’t let’s get mean and dirty – kids need a balanced approach. ‘Many’ are doing very well, and all we need to be concerned about is that the gap between high achievers and low achievers is worse than in any other comparable – OECD – country.....”  (This piece appeared too late for inclusion here, but see The Australian, Higher Education supplement, Wed. 5th May 04, p.28)

But, to respond to Meiers, what if the high achievers are those whose parents taught them before they went to school, and the low achievers are those whose only resources were the standard ‘whole language’ based pedagogic methods of the current early childhood and junior primary establishments. To determine the right answer to this question might be the best reason to respond positively to the initial request by the concerned academics that a review of classroom teaching methods was (badly) needed (right now).
    
Please call me (on 08 8270 3548) if you have any questions regarding any aspect of this email. If you would like to look at further relevant material you might like to check out the blogspots referenced in my signature block.

I especially recommend Blogspot 2 as a way to understand the dynamic origins of our current educational problems.
   
Sincerely,
Glynne Sutcliffe

LIST OF DOCUMENTS,  IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Recent correspondence in The Australian, and associated documents.
Issues :  ‘Whole language’ and phonics;  Mark Latham and Mem Fox.
  
1) Letter in which 26 academics call for review of methods of teaching reading in Oz schools.  Published in Higher Education Supplement, Wednesday 21st April.

2) My letter to editor. Faxed in to The Australian on Friday 23rd April. Not published.

3) A piece by journalist, Dani Cooper, published in Higher Education Supplement, Wednesday 21st April. (Interesting because of its apparent attempt to shore up ‘whole language’ against its enemies by citing Kevin Wheldall and Paul March)

4) A column by Janet Albrechtsen published on the Opinion Page a week later, on Wednesday April 28th.

5) Mem Fox’s crazy letter of response to Janet Albrechtsen.

6) ‘Glynne Sutcliffe answers Mem Fox’. (My response to her manic pronouncements.)
Faxed in to The Australian on Monday 3rd May. Not published.

7)ff. A couple of related snippets

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

MY LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN’S EDITOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, RECEIVED IN SYDNEY (AFTER PHONE CONVERSATION WITH HES EDITOR EBRU YAMAN) BY FAX, ON FRIDAY 23RD APRIL

Dear Editor,

Higher Education Supplement,

The Australian

Regarding the letter from some of Australia's 'researchers, psychologists, linguists and educators' published in The Australian's Higher Education supplement of 21st April 2004 :

The Oz 'experts' have, near to the middle of 2004, finally caught up with the need to go public - on a debate which was decisively settled in 1998 in the United States, with the publication of the anthology of essays edited by Snow, Burns and Griffin, on 'Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children'.(1)

In this book, research-based conclusions were presented to fully justify the assertion that a child's possession of phonemic awareness (that is, being able to identify the discrete sounds that go to make up a word) and a grasp of the alphabetic principle (the way those sounds are coded into visual form through the use of letters to symbolise sounds) were the best predictors of the acquisition of reading skills.

This book was widely reviewed at the time, and contained papers from leading early childhood researchers and educators from almost every major university in the U.S.  Many of these were former advocates of 'whole language' renouncing (somewhat reluctantly) their former views in favor of deferring to the research findings.

After its publication no early childhood 'authority' in Australia (with the possible exception of Kevin Wheldall) was ever again heard to say that phonics was only for dummies who couldn't figure things out with the visual cues approach of whole language. (The irony here, of course, is that whole language is almost directly responsible for the widely observed and deeply deplored general decline in literacy amongst all young people who have been taught in this bizarre way.)

After its publication we got a lot of talk about the need for ‘a balanced approach’, and the apparent acknowledgment of the value of phonics.

Answering parent queries, teachers would now say, why yes, we've always used phonics (i.e. at point of need, in reply to individual queries from children and without any overall or underpinning logic).

This did not mean giving up on whole language, merely disguising its continued role in framing the teaching of reading.

 

In April 2004, our home-grown Oz experts are most directly following up on Jane Cadzow's cover story on the teaching of reading in the Good Weekend magazine in The Age and the SMH on October 4th 2003.

Both the letter of the 'experts' and Jane Cadzow's article have stressed that educational practice in Australian schools is still dominated by the whole language paradigm, with 'lip service' paid to phonics.

Despite the advocacy of phonics in the No Child Left Behind Act passed by Congress in January 2002, this is still pretty much the situation in the United States, as Louisa Moats so articulately argued in her long essay "Whole Language Lives On". (This essay can be accessed on the web by anyone who knows how to use Google.)

In the United States the teachers(!) are putting up a strong resistance to federal initiatives designed to ensure that every child actually learns to read. But because funding is now 'results dependent', linked directly to  'performance outcomes', and no longer offered for programs that simply sound good, new reading programs are at this very moment being established in every small town and big city. (2)

What is occurring now in Australia is an echo of the debates of the mid-nineties. These debates should have provided a definitive conclusion some time towards the end of 1996. [Channel Nine is to be congratulated for a 'cover story' on whole language and its idiotic procedures some time in October 1996. (I stand to be corrected on the exact date). Unfortunately no one in the mainstream teaching game took any obvious notice, even though their dominant practice was lucidly attacked.]

That whole language ever managed to get a hearing at all anywhere is in itself remarkable. Lancelot Hogben's book "The Loom of Language" published some fifty or more years ago, was a brilliantly well-informed and detailed popular account of the history and writing of language in which the significance of the alphabet as a major civilisational advance over picture writing (hieroglyphics, etc.) was clearly sign-posted. One would have thought that professionals should surely have been aware of matters that were transparent so long ago to the author of a highly erudite but nevertheless popular text.

However, more recently, another widely available and fully argued research overview was published about two years ago in the Scientific American, again with the same conclusion that phonics had clearly won the reading wars, and that there was little point in discussing the matter any further.

Just prior to that, in July 2001, there was a White House Conference called by First Lady Laura Bush with a paper presented by Grover Whitehurst from the upper echelons of the USDE, who contrasted children who had been taught to read on the basis of using "outside in" skills (wide vocabulary, lots of stories, comfort in conversation, wide general knowledge, immersion techniques) with children who had been given the keys to the kingdom of literacy with the "inside out' skills of phonics, alphabetic awareness, sound-symbol correspondences, etc. The statistical analysis showed 'inside out' skills (i.e. phonics based) to be significantly more efficient than 'outside in' skills (as promoted by whole language people) in getting a child to acquire an easy proficiency in reading.

So we must welcome Australia's academic experts and professionals to the arena of public debate when they no longer have to go to the barricades, and when they are totally safe in calling for a review of educational practices that they should have challenged (and demolished) one or two decades ago - perhaps in response to Rudolf Flesch's book, Why Johnny Can't Read, published in the late nineteen sixties.

_______________

But there is more to teaching children to read than settling the question of phonics versus whole language

The apparent attempt to confine the discussion to this issue may be an attempt to keep the discussion within parameters that the education departments of Australia think they can handle.
_______________

The current primary issue is not the old fight over phonics versus whole language, but the question of when children should be taught.

Researchers now advocate an early start.  How early? Well, before kindergarten in the answer coming through loud and clear from the United States. Washington has built in both carrots and sticks to persuade both teachers and teacher unions to place more importance on the effective teaching of reading skills, beginning early.  But in the US children start kindergarten at five. So how long before kindergarten? The British Government went on record years ago as deeming that the debate over whether children should play or learn was sterile, and that three was the best age to start familiarising children with letters and numbers (and colours, etc. etc. etc.)

A number of private schools in Australia have already established early learning centres - mainly full day centres operating five days a week. The value of early learning is thus beginning to be acknowledged here.  (Do note that there is a downside to this. The early learning practices now being developed actually accentuate the problem of a child being able to get sufficient parental nurturing prior to being thrust into the wider non-family world.)

On 22nd January 2000 The Australian Magazine carried a story about training guide dogs. Instead of waiting till the pups were twelve months old - still the standard procedure with the Labradors who will become guides for the blind, for instance - Nina Bondarenko, an Australian-born dog trainer now working in England decided to check over the litters at five weeks and select the brightest pups for intensive training that began at seven weeks. She has become renowned for producing dogs with such a highly developed intelligence that they can, for instance, pay bus drivers and work ATMs. You can read all about it in her book, Working Wonders.

The lesson was clear, and entirely consistent with the brain research papers on human infant brain development - the earlier the experience-created axon-dendrite linking of neurons, the denser the subsequent brain linkages can become, and the greater the level of functioning intelligence, and intellectual competence of the adult.

  
It is to Mark Latham's credit that he has picked up on the proposition that reading skills are best acquired early. It is unfortunate that he has taken as his guru on this matter a lady who is a magnificent story-teller and a very bad guide to the teaching of reading.

It would be interesting to try and find children other than her daughter Chloe who have learnt to read because their teacher(s) followed  Mem Fox's advice.

Mem Fox is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of whole language techniques - immersion, contextual guessing, visual cues, the whole lot. The people who will gain most from her recommendations will be book publishers who will be selling three books per child to the federal government for distribution to all new-borns. A critique of her theories can be found as one of the items available on http://earlyreadingplayschool.blogspot.com

Mark Latham is prepared to foot a bill of some $80 million to pay for this feel-good exercise.

Now Mark Latham may be open-minded and a breath of fresh air and a provider of all kinds of challenges to the status quo. But if he wants to be effective he ought to do his homework.  I have sent him three separate emails advising him that he is setting out with the best of intentions on the wrong path, and nothing will stop him from ending up nowhere having achieved nothing. I have provided him with leads to follow up on. It is not my job to educate the Leader of the Opposition. But he would have done more justice to his new job had he taken the time to check out my advice.
_______________

So much, then, for phonics and an early start.

Is there anything else? Yes - a sleeper issue now being mentioned here and there is the issue of parent involvement. Everyone is agreed parent involvement is invaluable in ensuring that early learning opportunities are taken up by the child. No-one (except the Early Reading Play School to be mentioned in a moment) seems to know how to go about obtaining effective parent involvement.

There is one thing that is certain however, and that is that getting parents to turn up in droves at the local primary school to "listen to the children read" is only marginally more useful than the parent doing absolutely nothing at all.  If Latham’s plan is implemented its primary benefit will derive from its encouragement of parent involvement. How much better if parents knew what they were doing!

_______________

Those who feel they need to understand the educational theorists who dictate what will happen in our schools - a frustrating exercise at the best of times - are currently trembling at the prospect of the next big confrontation. Over mathematics.

Every single fault in the teaching of reading over the last 3-4 decades has been replicated in the math field. The only reason the preliminary joustings of the mathematicians has not yet hit the headlines is because the headlines have been pre-empted by literacy issues. Get ready!  After reading, then maths.

_______________

What are parents to do?   Well, their children will be grown before the dust really settles. The most effective immediate action they can take is to take on full responsibility for all the early basic teaching of their under-five children themselves. This means teaching their children all their letters, all their numbers, lots of singing and a bit of key board, lots of stories, and a second language (which one is not important, but two languages learnt early is a major advantage for any child, and especially to one growing up into the new global environment).

If a child has acquired this kind of intellectual repertoire before they turn five, then they can be more safely allowed to venture into the school rooms of the land with some hope that a positive outcome will result.

Parents should completely abandon the idea of leaving everything till their child is ready for high school. They should abandon the idea that 'little children should play'. (This diabolic proposition is actually a disguised form of child abuse).  They should abandon the idea that lots of money spent on private schools for the final stretch of the school years will ensure a good future. It won't. Everything is too late by then. Those who do well in high school will be those children who were well-prepared for Grade One.

_______________

The Early Reading Play School, with its first classes started in Adelaide in 1993, had the answer over a decade ago to the specific problem of how best to teach reading. It remains cutting edge in every respect. Its curriculum, combining phonics, an early start, integrated parent involvement, and a few other 'secret ingredients' facilitating easy learning, could have been and might still be an Australia-wide answer to the real needs of young children.

Over two thousand children have done the program to this point in time. The overwhelming majority (that is, near to 100%) are reported as not merely enjoying school but as high achievers, quick to grasp ideas, articulate, good story writers, interested in subjects right across the board - and often top of their class.

As founder and director, principal, teacher, and chief bottle washer for this operation, I can testify to its real effectiveness.

If you would like to help us help kids get a better start in life, and become more competent adults, read through our web sites - including the blogspots - and then, if you are inspired with the desire to get involved, contact me directly to see if we can plug you in to the project. (We need to set up centres right across the country, as soon as humanly possible.)

   
Glynne Sutcliffe MA (Chicago) BA (Hons Hist) Dip Ed (Melb)

Director
Early Reading Play School

Chandlers Hill, SA  5159

Ph/fax 8270 3548

PO Box 486, Blackwood, SA  5051

Email: glynnesutcliffe@internode.on.net

Web: http://www.users.on.net/glynnesutcliffe

 

Or see web log spots

http://earlyreadingplayschool.blogspot.com
http://review100childrenturn10.blogspot.com
http://cleverkids.blogspot.com
______________________________

(1) Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.  Edited by Catherine E. Snow, Susan Burns, and Peg Griffin. 1998. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 448pp. ISBN 030-90-6418X. US$35.95.F

(2) The most dramatic confrontation occurred in New York. Mayor Bloomberg was elected on a platform that included his personal commitment to 'fix up' New York schools. He appointed Joel Klein, from outside the pool of education candidates, to head up the education overhaul. Klein appointed Diana Lam to sort out the reading curriculum issues.  And Diana Lam was forced to resign. Bloomberg and Joel Klein decided that the federal millions were more important than preserving Diana Lam's freedom to choose which reading program would be used in New York public schools.  Her program of choice was widely described as 'really' whole language in disguise, with lip service to phonics. Federal money for New York schools was withheld until an approved reading curriculum was selected.)

 

3.  THEN THERE WAS DANI COOPER’S COLUMN ALSO PUBLISHED ON THE 21^st OF APRIL, IN WHICH THE OBSERVANT WILL NOTE AN ATTEMPT TO CLAW BACK CREDIBILITY FOR WHOLE LANGUAGE – MOST ESPECIALLY IN THE COMMENTS OF PAUL MARCH

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9339702%5E12332,00.html

 

HIGHER EDUCATION

Phonics at core of new literacy war

By Dani Cooper

April 21, 2004

 

AUSTRALIA'S leading literacy researchers have warned that schoolchildren are failing under trendy reading programs that have no scientific backing.

 

In a move that reignites the reading wars, a group of researchers has written an open letter to federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson warning of a gap between the teaching methods used in schools and those proven by research to be effective.

 

The group condemns the "whole-language" philosophy used in many schools which "requires only exposure to a rich language environment without any specific teaching of the alphabetic system and letter-sound relationships".

 

Instead, the group supports the introduction of a phonics-based system that emphasises mastery of the alphabetic code and has called for a review of teaching approaches.

 

University of Technology, Sydney education specialist Paul March has attacked the letter as "misleading", pointing out that many state syllabuses were revised after the reading wars of the 1980s and '90s.

 

Cognitive scientist Max Coltheart, a federation fellow at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science and signatory to the letter, said Australia "punched above its weight" in reading research. Findings by Australian researchers were being implemented overseas and quoted in US reports, yet in Australia these same academics were being ignored.

 

"Our view is that the research is very clear, but it's not getting through to the teachers and clinicians," Professor Coltheart said.

 

He said NSW was a particular concern because some of the strongest supporters of the whole-language approach taught in education faculties in the state's universities.

 

Another signatory to the letter, Kevin Wheldall, told the HES: "It can't be emphasised enough that the whole-language philosophy still has a grip on the education system in Australia."

 

Professor Wheldall, of the Macquarie University Special Education Centre, said many whole-language advocates stressed their approach included phonics.

 

But he added: "The scale pan is banging down heavily on the whole-language side with lip service to phonics.

 

"It wouldn't be so bad if whole language was a bad idea for everyone. Those kids from bookish, middle-class families who were never going to struggle to learn to read will be fine.

 

"Those who would struggle ... unless they have phonics, will never learn."

 

Mr March, associate director of UTS's Centre for Reading and Education in the Arts, said NSW had adopted a more functional approach to reading when the syllabus was overhauled in 1997.

 

Phonics was one of the skills needed to learn to read, but "sounds have to be taught in context, to have meaning".

 

He said the functional approach "teaches language in use - real language for real purposes in real contexts".

 

Mr March, who has been teaching the teachers for 30 years, said the researchers had a distorted view of the debate as "these people are clinical people and would only see kids with extreme reading problems".

 

"[None of the signatories to the letter] is from a school, and they are the ones you have to ask," he said. "I haven't been to a classroom where they don't teach phonics."

 

4.  ON THE 28^th APRIL, A WEEK AFTER THE ORIGINAL LETTER AND FOUR DAYS AFTER MY EMAIL TO THE HES EDITOR, JANET ALBRECHTSEN’S COLUMN ON THE OPINION PAGE OF THE WEDNESDAY AUSTRALIAN  (I.E. THE DAY THE HES SUPPLEMENT IS ALSO PUBLISHED) DEALT WITH – PHONICS. WHOLE LANGUAGE, MARK LATHAM AND MEM FOX.

 

NOW, AS COMMONSENSICAL AND WELL-EXPRESSED AS JANET ALBRECHTSEN’S VIEWS ARE ON THESE MATTERS, I AM PUZZLED BY THE WAY HER VIEWS ECHO MINE, AND THE POSSIBLE CONNECTION TO THE FACT THAT SHE IS A REGULAR COLUMNIST FOR THE AUSTRALIAN AND I AM NOT. IT COULD ALL BE PERFECTLY INNOCENT – SAME STIMULUS, SAME RESPONSE. MAYBE!  OF COURSE SHE HAS MADE NO REFERENCE TO THE AMERICAN SCENE – WE DON’T ADMIT TO BEING FAMILIAR WITH WHAT IS GOING ON OVER THERE. NATIONAL PRIDE AND ALL THAT.

 

 

JANET ALBRECHTSEN

Latham stutters over reading revolution

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.

 

5.  MEM FOX COULDN’T RESIST HAVING A GO AT JANET ALBRECHTSEN

 

Tip provided by Crikey.com.au.   NEWSLETTER, Thursday, 29 April, 2004, 3:43pm

 

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…. 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

 

­­

6.   GLYNNE SUTCLIFFE ANSWERS MEM FOX,     Monday 3^rd May 2004

­­­­­­­­­­

 

Mem Fox is 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. But she misses the essential point of the critics. 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 instruction alone provides this, and is best taught systematically, and first. As a ‘pillar’ of something else it doesn’t work. 

 

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.

                                                                              

Sincerely,

Glynne Sutcliffe, MA (Chicago) BA Hist.Hons, Dip Ed. (Melb),

Director,

Early Reading Play School

______________________________________________________________________________

 

7. THEN FOR ME THE NEXT DEVELOPMENT WAS DISCOVERING THAT DANI COOPER HAD WRITTEN A SECOND COLUMN. HOWEVER PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PIECE WAS WRITTEN ON 22^ND APRIL – IN RETROSPECT IT LOOKS AS THOUGH THE WHOLE LANGUAGE ESTABLISHMENT MOVED VERY SMARTLY TO ATTEMPT TO LIMIT THE POTENTIAL DAMAGE FROM THE INITIAL LETTER OF THE TWENTY-SIX. BTW - IN AN ABC INTERVIEW ON 24^TH MAY DR. JAN TURBILL’S COMMENTS CLEARLY WARRANTED THE CHARGE THAT IN THE CLASSROOM WHOLE LANGUAGE CONTINUES TO PREVAIL (IN QUEENSLAND, NSW AND NATIONALLY) WITH LIP SERVICE TO PHONICS – AND THAT AN OPEN REVIEW OF CLASSROOM TEACHING PRACTICES MIGHT WELL BE THE BEST APPROACH TO GETTING THIS OUT IN THE OPEN

 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9349727%5E12332,00.html

 

HIGHER EDUCATION

Teachers reject reading plan criticism

By Dani Cooper,

The Australian, Thursday, April 22, 2004

 

EDUCATORS have defended themselves against claims they ignore scientific findings and follow trendy reading programs by pointing to improving literacy rates among school children.

 

Australian Literacy Educators Association president Jan Turbill yesterday dismissed the critics as an "unknown few" who were not educators and had no idea what happened in the classroom.

 

The Australian yesterday published an open letter to federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson from 26 leading literacy researchers calling for a review of teaching approaches.

 

The group warned of a gap between teaching methods used in schools and those proven by research to be effective.

 

The researchers support the introduction of a phonics-based system that emphasises mastery of the alphabetic code.

 

Dr Turbill, of Wollongong University's education faculty, said suggestions schools were following a "whole language" approach to reading at the expense of phonics and the alphabet were wrong.

 

The whole language system relies on committing unfamiliar words to memory and encourages children to learn to read using context and visual cues.

 

Dr Turbill said the state systems had no problems with the way reading was being taught, adding that literacy levels had been improving for the past 10 years.

 

"Phonics is integral to reading," she said. "You can't read if you don't know what the sounds are."

 

Dr Turbill challenged the critics to visit any kindergarten to Year 2 classroom and find one where phonics was not being taught.

 

"I sit in classrooms and observe what goes on and see that teachers do teach phonics in a very systematic way, but in the context of what reading is all about," she said.

 

"I could gather hundreds of names to a letter that indicates that the alphabetic principle (phonics) is taught in our schools – quite explicitly and systematically. This requirement is part of every mandated syllabus in the country."

 

Many of the researchers who had written to Dr Nelson were working with children who were not learning well at school and "then they blame the school system".

 

 

 

Dr. Jan Turbill is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong.  On Tuesday 24^th May she was interviewed by Julie McCrossin on the ABC’s Life Matters program, along with Lorraine Collins a primary school principal in Queensland.

 

Last year Lorraine Collins was presented with a national literacy award by Brendan Nelson, our Federal Minister for Education, to acknowledge the excellence of her contribution to the education of Australia’s children. And so let us reminisce.

 

Shortly after Brendan Nelson was elevated to Cabinet as Minister for Education he undertook an admirable exercise in PR on behalf of the virtues of spelling. In announcing a spelling competition at a Sydney High School he was asked by a (fairly junior) student to spell ‘ethnology’, a word his teacher had taught the class the day before. Unhappily Brendan Nelson couldn’t oblige. He compounded his problems by observing that he knew it had something to do with insects, thus demonstrating that he couldn’t distinguish between ethnology and entomology. Not surprisingly, next day this became a front page story in The Australian and provided delectation for all as the country laughed at Brendan Nelson’s expense. Brendan Nelson is in his forties. His spelling could possibly reflect deficiencies in the education provided for children in primary schools in the nineteen-sixties. In any case it is clear that neither spelling nor Greek language roots used in the formation of English vocabulary are his strong points.

 

Why wonder then that he presented a national literacy award to Lorraine Collins, who in the course of the interview just mentioned used ‘continua’ as a singular noun – three times!!!

 

[May be a medical education is not as useful to the acquisition of literacy as an Arts Degree at Melbourne University followed up by a stint as Professor of Politics at Monash University. Or maybe Brendan Nelson was simply trying to buy off the ‘whole language’ committed teaching establishment from the aggressive attacks it launched again David Kemp. Certainly David Kemp knew a great deal more than Brendan Nelson about what it takes for a child to learn to read. And we remember that David Kemp did not neglect to read stories to his children every day – he just knew that more than this was needed.]

 

Augmenting this gaffe with a few neologisms of her own, Lorraine Collins also revealed in this interview that she is a staunch defender of scaffolding children with reading skills (!!!) and of using an eclectic approach to pedagogic methods. Presumably this advocacy of eclecticism derives from the fact that the spin value of referring to ‘a balanced approach’ in teaching children to read has disappeared (since Louisa Moats published “Whole Language Lives On”). So now we have an eclectic approach – a distinction without a difference! 

 

Whole language versus phonics should not be a matter for any kind of contention – research, commonsense and practical teaching results all testify to the superiority of phonics. However, despite conclusively losing the debate whole language supporters are unwilling to concede anything but the barest minimum to critics. In Australia at the moment the discussion seems to have once more degenerated into the usual unsupportable (and insufferable) grandstanding of those who have career commitments to defend, as they make one more effort to defend the indefensible.

______________________________________________________________________________

 

 

From Gadfly, Thursday 29^th April 2004

 

 “This is your brain on phonics…”

 

The Wall Street Journal this week highlighted a new study (by acclaimed reading expert Sally Shaywitz) published in the journal Biological Psychiatry that used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain activity of poor readers and gauge the brain wave effects of an intensive phonics program. The study provides biological evidence that with the right type of intervention program, poor readers can show improvement by, literally, strengthening the functioning of the relevant portions of their brains. The intensive (105 tutoring hours) phonics-based approach yielded a marked improvement in children's reading accuracy and fluency and continued to be effective long after the tutoring sessions were through. Imaging done a year after the program's conclusion showed that the brain activity of the poor readers did not lapse back to pre-program levels but maintained the level/type of activity that developed over the course of the reading sessions. Standard school-level interventions (special education and tutoring) did not have the same positive effect (either long or short-term) on the brains of poor readers. This suggests that an intense approach emphasizing phonics helps re-train the brains of poor readers to function more like those of good readers. (GS: My italics.)

 

"Poor readers, given new lessons, show changes in brain activity," by Christopher Windham, Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2004 (subscription required)

_______________________________

 

GS – I haven’t checked the longer article from which this snippet is drawn because I don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. However, I draw your attention to this as the latest support for the claim that phonics instruction (systematic and intensive) actually fine-tunes the physical structures of the brain.

 

While the research here has been done on ‘poor readers’ our contention is that good readers got that way because they had initial phonics instruction (probably from Mum or Dad, remembering how they were taught way back in the old days when children learnt to read reasonably easily.)

­­­­­­­­­­­

9. CAN WE END ON A MORE UPBEAT NOTE – YES, WE CAN GIVE YOU THE  TRANSCRIPT OF A RADIO PROGRAM ON THE ABC IN OCTOBER 1996, WHEN SANDY McCUTCHEON BRAVELY LEAPT INTO THE LITERACY FRAY IN FULL SWING AT THAT TIME BECAUSE  OF AN ACER REPORT THAT HAD JUST BEEN PUBLISHED (FOR DETAILS SEE FOOTNOTE).  THE TRANSCRIPT DOES INDICATE THAT THE FAILINGS OF OUR CURRENT CROP OF LITERACY EXPERTS ARE NOT QUITE SO BAD AS IN 1996, IF WE TAKE ALISON LEE TO BE REASONABLY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ACADEMIC INCUMBENTS OF THE MID- NINETIES.

THE TALK-BACK HOST, THE EDUCATION EXPERT AND THE PARENT[1]

 

Transcribed (warts and all)  by Glynne Sutcliffe (who was only saved from subsequent incarceration in Leunig’s Home For the Appalled by the sheerest of good luck).

October 1996

 

Sandy McCutcheon, talk back host: My son had problems with book-reading, but was terrific on the computer, where he left me for dead, and I found myself functionally illiterate in this area.

 

Alison Lee, educational expert:  this is a good example. It is very pertinent for this debate,  I agree with John that we aren’t talking about a phenomenon that is stable. There isn’t a single stable thing called literacy.  It is interesting that the ACER material is not measuring computer literacy.  And one of the reasons for this is that this wasn’t an issue in the 1970’s. 

 

Sandy: I was just going to say that despite the money and the glare of publicity, literacy rates haven’t changed, according to the study, in twenty years. How do we explain that ?

 

Alison: I think we need to step back from some of the very simplistic replayings of old debates. I think, one of the things that strikes me very much is that this is a replay. The terms of reference are totally predictable. We are lining up the same kinds of people who are saying the same kinds of things. It is interesting to note for example that in yesterday’s Australian we bring in the second phase of this kind of replay. The academics now are coming out to talk about the issues of literacy levels at university. This is very much deja vu.  Which isn’t to say that it isn’t a serious and complex problem.  But the fact that we are debating it in much the same terms as the last time this came up is a matter of some concern. There are two kinds of basic theses or positions that get taken up in this kind of debate. One of them is “Literacy is in crisis.” We have new figures, newly released positions taken up by politicians, and we are suddenly landed in crisis, and we need to address this. 

 

The other position which I think is equally problematic is the position that has been taken up by many academics, which is that “Literacy has always been a problem”, and in other words we are seeing a phenomenon where nothing much has changed and where literacy is clearly a very complex thing that we haven’t quite got our hands on.  This maybe the case, but it does raise further questions that we really do need to begin to address and that is the question that you have raised, that is, why has nothing changed?  I don’t think it can be simply concluded that nothing has changed. I think a great deal has changed. We simply cannot be measuring the same kinds of things.

 

Sandy: Yes, Well. The ACER test claims to be measuring basic literacy.  We’ve had a go at defining literacy, and we’ve found out how difficult that is !  But how do you define ‘basic’? And do these tests measure up to all the academic rigor that they should? 

 

Alison: I’m not closely familiar with the terms of this test, so I really can’t answer that question at a technical level.  But I think that we clearly do have to address questions of literate competence in young people and in adults. And it’s worth bearing in mind that we have only just begun to gather statistics on these other kinds of things really since the seventies. So we are not measuring some kind of enduring phenomenon here. Literacy became a public issue in the seventies. It really didn’t really receive much attention before that at all. There has been some important historical work done in the last couple of years, on the history of literacy in Australia, and that is the work of Bill Green and John Hodgins and Alan Luke at Deakin University, and the Queensland University, which is a report for the Australian Literacy Foundation. It seems very clear that certain kinds of concerns emerged in the 1970’s, which have remerged and been replayed over the last twenty years; what has changed I think that is important is the role of literacy in work, and in society in general, has become more and more complex. We no longer have work sectors where blue collar workers and related kinds of jobs are actually able to function without high levels of written literacy skills. We have a changing situation quite clearly there. And we have a proliferation of work-place training kinds of practices coming into play. Can I say though that I think we have to see literacy in the very broad context of the history and the future of Australian institutions more generally.  It seems to me that at the end of the twentieth century we are talking about institutions in crisis in a variety of ways.  I mean looking at the paper this morning, about the kind of failure of confidence in the NSW police force, is just one example. The crisis in hospital care, which seems to me that  to mean that we are in a situation of extraordinarily rapid change in social relations, as well as in economic and work-place kinds of situations. 

 

Sandy: It also suggests, Alison, that we may be in danger of over-reacting,  or reacting too quickly, without thinking through or learning the lessons from the past, but more of that in a moment because I’d like to take a couple more calls, and also to Professor Ken Wiltshire, to comment on our calls. Let’s go to Mary in Perth.  Welcome.

 

Mary in Perth: I just wanted to say that I agree with your speaker who places emphasis on the role of the home environment, compared to the schoolroom, because I think that over a period of time too, television and videos have taken over a great influence in family life, and that has to be a crucial factor. 

 

Sandy:   Yes - it seems to me we’ve got a lot of crucial factors. I mean we can point the finger at teaching methods, at curriculum, at television, at the home environment, and we need somehow to co-ordinate all of these ideas, and it just doesn’t sound too easy to me.

 

Mary:   .............Illiteracy..........the poor we shall always have with us.....

 

Sandy: Now to Delia in Sydney. Welcome to the program...

 

Delia in Sydney:  I married into a family of lawyers and journalists who came up through the system of nuns and brothers who were not educated themselves. They had an inspector system, where the inspectors oversaw the curricula of these schools. And my family were not paying members of that school because they were too poor, and the Catholic Church took a lot of poor families free. And the system worked. They were very articulate people. And they still are.

 

Sandy: Yes, it’s interesting. One of the things that always comes up in a discussion like this is the thing about teaching methods, and you get back into that old argument about whether you do drill learning, or do you learn some other way, and the point was made in the paper yesterday or some other day, saying that, well, drill is fine for sport, or music, how come its not good for literacy. So what you are saying is that some of the old methods were good methods.

 

Delia:  Yes - because the families, too, backed the kids

 

Sandy:  Yes, well, alright Delia .Thank You.    John in Hawthorn. Welcome to the program.

 

John in Hawthorn: Yes hallo. Well I don’t know how relevant my experience, or my daughter’s experience in fact, is to the current discussion, because she is now twenty-five, and she learnt to read, obviously, a fair time ago. In fact we taught her, starting at about age three and a half, at home.   When she started at school, her first year at school was sensational. She had a teacher who was excited by this young child who could read so very well,  and every day she was bringing home books from the school library to read - with the encouragement of the teacher. Once she reached her second year, suddenly the books stopped coming home, it was about three or four weeks into the school year and I asked her what was going on, and she was very evasive, and found great difficulty in answering me, and I had to really work at it. And it turned out that she was being punished, and she was being punished because she could read too well. What had happened was that the teacher had realised that she had a child in the class - this is a different teacher obviously to the first year teacher  - who in one respect was very different to the rest of the children in the class, and the teacher couldn’t handle this - and her way of dealing with the problem was to attempt to hold my daughter back, until the others caught up, and her way of doing this was to get my daughter to stand out in front of the class and read a chosen section of a book, and if she mispronounced anything she would be punished, sent to the back of the class, and refused permission to take home a book.

 

Sandy: I would have moved her out of that school quick smart....

 

John in Hawthorn:  Well, she was subsequently moved. Interestingly enough, shortly after her arrival at the new school there was an ACER test, and they ran out of tests at Year Ten to give her

 

Sandy: Leave it there.  I want to go back to Professor Wiltshire for a comment on those calls. It seems everyone has a view on this

 

Prof. Ken Wiltshire, educational expert: Yes I think that’s right Sandy, and I think that everyone is putting the finger on relevant parts. I mean it is true that the families can do a lot more to help the schools, and we shouldn’t blame the schools entirely for what has happened. It is also true that we should test people at a very young age. As Mary said, and many others said, the home environment is particularly important,

 

Sandy:  Are we, are we....in danger of school-bashing here, or teacher-bashing. I mean, I watched a television news report the other day, about the National Young Playwright’s Award, and the winner was a twelve year old who had written this extraordinary script. Now there’s a school that is doing it right, so there are some good stories here.....

 

Prof Wiltshire  (Ken):  Well in my enquiry we have had a lot of schools doing some wonderful work. Where you do get good literacy standards is where there is an effective partnership between the parents and the school.  A lot of parents are reluctant to become involved in curriculum.   They will paint the fence, they’ll raise money, they’ll conduct chook raffles, but ask them to be interested in the curriculum in the school and they’ll back off.

 

A lot of the schools produce material that is not parent friendly, and therefore it is a bit of a problem.

 

But I think a lot of the points that have been made, very important achievers, as John said, we have too much streaming, we tear down the tall poppies.

 

But I’m getting sick of this debate.

 

Honestly, I just say to my colleagues, Alison and John, you know, we’ve heard all this from you educators for too long now. When are we going to get some action on this? I mean, John, if you are listening, you’ve done these tests now, how about a follow up! Tell us the causes of this, I mean you’ve been speculating on this program, about what the causes of these things are.  Why doesn’t your body, Australia’s most pre-eminent educational research body, now start a second phase, and tell us what are the links, what are the particular causes. The statistics aren’t enough. And I think, you know, that we need to look at more effective testing, particularly at a young age.

 

The teacher education system is woeful in this country. (GS – my italics) Teachers are coming out of universities not adequately prepared, certainly in the areas of literacy and numeracy.

 

School-parent partnerships, the teaching methods you have mentioned yourself Sandy.

 

I mean I’d like to see a parliamentary committee set up for three or four years to oversee the problems of literacy in Australia. I don’t see why we can’t get some kind of task force going.

 

 

Sandy : Are we asking too much of the schools. One of the other points that was made in an article I was reading when we were dong some kind of background on this was that the schools have been asked to pick up everything, like from line dancing to sex education to the latest whatever it is, now its computers, then it’ll be the internet literacy, and whatever it is....the crowded curriculum.

 

Prof Wiltshire / Ken: Yes I agree with you. My research showed that. Also that eighty-five percent of every day of a principal and deputy principal’s time is spent on behaviour management. But I get back to the point, Sandy, literacy is fundamental, and it’s fundamental to everything, and if we don’t address that, all the other aspects that you mentioned are going to cause problems for us as individuals and also for the society.   So let’s get a bit of action, especially from the education community.

 

Sandy:    Yes, right, well let’s go back to Alison Lee.  Alison, action?

 

Alison: Action I think in Ken’s terms could be taken to be a good thing. I’d be very keen though to make sure that the terms of references of the kind of investigation that Ken wants were broad enough, and wide-ranging enough to ask the right questions, because it seems to me that to isolate literacy it to go..is a very retrograde step.  We are not talking about something that exists separately from the whole institutional set of practices and contexts and circumstances. We would...I would be very interested in a kind of investigation that asked very profound questions about the nature of schooling itself, taking, for example, things such as the low funding that Australian schools get in comparison to other countries in the OECD, and following through then what that actually says about the incentives that are provided for people to actually go into teacher education, and to develop themselves professionally and so on.   I mean, I think we’d need to be very careful that we ask the right kinds of questions there, and not simply target one phenomenon that is in fact in my view not going to get us anywhere.

 

Sandy:  Well, alright, Alison I’ll come back to you in a moment. I’d like to bring in the President of the Queensland Teachers Union, and deputy President of the Australian Education Union, Ian Mackie, because the account of the lack of improvement in literacy rates between 1975 and 1995 is not, as..as..some people say, a good report card for teachers And I wonder just how you respond to that sort of criticism, Ian ? 

 

Ian Mackie, education expert:   Oh ,Sandy, there’s two ways we can respond to that. The first is, “I told you so.” because we as a union movement and as a group of professional teachers, have been saying to the community for well two decades now, that education has been starved for funding. And I noticed with interest your previous speaker taking about OECD countries, the AEU for instance at the last Federal election campaign said we would need a billion dollars for primary school education,  to bring us up to the average of our trading partners, and we are sick to the back teeth of hearing about international best practice, and bench-marking against our trading partners when we are the poor white trash when it comes to education funding, so, one response is, “I told you so”.   And these literacy results are indicative of under-funding. I notice in NSW the NSW government had a trial of reducing class sizes in the early years of schooling, and early indications from that trial show that there has been a significant improvement in the literacy standards of those young people - so

 

Sandy: Ian - but for years people have been saying its a matter of class sizes. I have heard it time and time again, from both sides of politics, from academics, from parents, from everyone - but nobody’s got the money to do it. 

 

Ian Mackie:  Well, the public needs to stop bleating about literacy standards then, if they’re not prepared to pay, the literacy standards, will, I think, either stagnate or continue to decline.  Because the other criticism, the other answer to these criticisms is about the changing nature of our clientele. We’ve got a lot of dysfunctional families out there, we’ve got a lot of poverty and stress in communities, that is finding its way into the classroom. And I often say to the public, that you can’t teach, that students can’t learn in situations where you’ve got students whose behaviour is bad, or who aren’t bathed, or not clothed, or not fed. This is the reality in Australia these days, and we’re just not facing up to that.

 

Sandy: Ian, can I turn to another point, that is the publication of test results, or comparisons of results between schools.  What is your feeling about that?

 

Ian Mackie: Yes we’re very concerned about that, because we know what those publications will show - it will show that the poor suburbs, and the students in those suburbs, at those schools, have very poor academic achievement. And that is the real issue. The relationship between poverty, dysfunctional families, and poor achievement ...

 

Sandy:  So do we need...... if we don’t have results.......do we need at least a national literacy bench-mark as a useful measure to allow teachers to identify problems ??

 

Ian Mackie: I think, I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying.  We do have the results,  they are available to the education community.  It is just that they are not splashed across the papers, and when they are splashed across the papers all they do is drive a nail into the coffin of those schools that are struggling to meet the needs of their community. Now I’ve actually seen situations where real estate agents sell real estate on the basis of the results that the neighborhood school gets, so I think we’ve got a real problem in marching down that area, until such time as we’ve got some guarantee that we will do something about it.  If we can identify the schools that we can,  we can do this, we can identify the schools that are struggling,  what are we going to do about it ?   And the answer is - nothing !  The state government in Queensland, and the national government, via their education policies, are not prepared to fund those concerns, and those problems...

 

Sandy : OK then Ian, leave it there. Ian Mackie, president of the Queensland Teachers’ Union,  and Deputy President of the Australian Education Union. Some more calls, then we’ll come back to Alison Lee and Professor Ken Wiltshire..  Let us go to Tiffany in Brisbane.  Hullo Tiffany...

 

Tiffany in Brisbane :   Hullo Sandy, how are you ? 

 

Sandy :   Yeah......Good !

 

Tiffany in Brisbane  :  I’d just like to make a comment on this finding that our literacy standards have changed, and I think that at least partly the cause of that is the change in reading instruction methods which now take place in our schools.  I think that children are taught to read by methods that aren’t verified by empirical research any more.  And that obviously if children are having problems with word recognition, then they are going to struggle with comprehension, because they are allocating all their resources just to reading the individual words. And as was mentioned at the start of this show, the example of the question about the bees dancing, that is measuring children’s comprehension,

 

Sandy:  Yep...

 

Tiffany:  So I think that teaching methods need to change. We need to use the most effective methods for teaching children, when they are learning to read, to start with.

 

Sandy:  But Tiffany, isn’t it also a question of time.  I know that one of the survey figures that I saw, a majority of schools were not using even the recommended amount of class time for these literacy problems.

 

Tiffany:  Well this is right, and if you are only using a small amount of time, and you are using a method that hasn’t been shown to work, then you are ………..

 

Sandy:  ...you are compounding the problem...Tiffany, thank you.  Let us go to Gabrielle in Bellingen. Hi Gabrielle.

 

Gabrielle: Hi Sandy.  My son has Toureg’s syndrome and because of the lack of funding and support in the school system for disabled children he rarely attends school full-time.  In fact at the moment he’s only allowed to go two days a week, however, the point I want to make is, he can read extremely well, at the school he’s in the top band of literacy in the basic skills test, and that is because I taught him to read when he was a baby, when he was very young, just a babe in arms,  and I started sounding out the alphabet,  and basic words to him, and the result is he can read anything...If I’d left it up to the schools,  he would never have learnt anything at all about reading.

 

Sandy:  Yes. Thank you, Gabrielle.  Well, let’s go to Inverell, and Jennifer, welcome to Australia Talks Back

 

Jennifer:  I think that there is a huge problem and that we are only tickling the edges of it.  For example  40 % of HSC Contemporary  English which I assume would be called ‘literacy”  is oral and listening. I think we are subject to so many fashions it is ridiculous. Do we use whole language, do we use phonetics, - we go through one stage and then go through another - one of my bandwagons, do you know how we used to have to learn 12 inches one foot, three feet one yard, and so on, (Yes!) and kids these days learn how to use multiples of ten and then practise actually using maths,  well I think there’s a huge argument for basic sorts of spelling reform,  like ‘ir’, ‘ible’, ‘able’ endings of words that are based on whether they were ‘ir’ or ‘or’ ending Latin verbs in the original texts, and we’ve got kids butting their heads on brick walls for absolutely no reason. The other thing is the teachers - I have seen students come from our school who in the old-fashioned concept were failures - that is they did not pass their HSC - who have gone into teaching, because the pay is so low that the students who are brighter will not go, so they drop the entry mark standard, and cannot get the calibre of people, even though the people in it are really well-intentioned and do their very best,....

 

Sandy: What you mean is that we are actually passing the problem along

 

Jennifer:  Of course they are. That’s what I mean. I feel that the whole thing really needs to be taken on in a real holistic sense...

 

Sandy:  Yes, Jennifer, thank you, that is a good suggestion. I want to come back to Alison Lee on this question of national standardising of tests and bench-marking and so on, and Alison, despite the arguments against national standardised testing, Alison, isn’t it useful to have a bench-mark?

 

Alison:  Oh I think we already do have quite a lot of information, of a certain kind.  I’m personally not convinced that any further testing of the kinds that we are doing is going to tell us any more.  I’m  not against  gaining  information, but I agree with Ian Mackie that we actually already  do have a great deal of information. We already know what we are going to find through our bench-marking exercise, that is beside the point that Ian’s quite right in saying that the information that we have will show that we have particular kinds of problems with schooling, and in particular kinds of schools, and in particular kinds of social groupings;  we clearly know that resources desperately need to be put into those schools..

 

Sandy: Ian  is right then, that money would solve some of those kinds of problems ...

 

Alison:  Well I don’t think that money by itself solves any kinds of problems, but I do think that the kind of data that we need though  is not so much more kinds of testing,  of an if you like an across the board way, but what we do lack, I think, is any very good,  qualitative, kind of rich accounts of how literacy actually is taught and learnt.  I mean we have begun to accumulate the kind of qualitative and ethnographic studies about how literacy actually happens, but we need a great deal more of that kind of information. It seems to me that the issues about how literacy is learnt, why literacy isn’t learnt, in particular kinds of schools - we need to understand teachers actual practices much better.  One of the great educators of, of, of,  the last fifty years, Garth Boomer,  once said that educational practice is desperately undocumented.  And I think that we need to take account of  that, that we need to understand if you like the  kind of social conditions and relationships under which literacy and learning occur.  It seems to me that, going back to Tiffany’s question, for example, that methods have changed and that um.. well clearly there has been some bad practice, in my view about kind of what you might call  band-waggoning, about the kind of wholesale introduction of  new kinds of methods , but it seems to me that if we did some empirical, some really systematic empirical work looking at how literacy  is actually being taught, my hunch is, from the material that I have been reading, that teachers actually work creatively,  if you like, across a variety of methods these days, and that there a great number of very effective methods for teaching literacy. The fact that there are problems with literacy seems to me not so much a question of individual methods, nor of kind of, too much TV in the home and so on, but the question that says that , that, um, that it is not an issue that needs to be addressed, I think, at the individual level,  at the level of the individual skills base of a student, because it seems to me very much more that, that schools are complex social institutions that exist in a very highly complex and changing environment, and it seems that the phenomenon of, of, youth literacy, the kind of  low levels of literacy,  the so-called Bart Simpson factor, um, seems to me to be one where its probably making a  lot more sense to say that young , that certain young people actively desire not to be literate in the kinds of forms of standard schooling that alienates them. And so I think that we, just to re-iterate, I think we need different kinds of data..

 

Sandy:  Alison, thank you very much for your input today, it’s been very good to talk to you.   Alison Lee, literacy specialist from the University of Technology in Sydney.

 

Ken Wiltshire - where to from here ...I mean, we’ve just touched, in an hour, we’ve just touched the debate, we’ve got the academics, we’ve got the teachers’ union, we’ve got a whole lot of different things, we’ve got the ideas of, of style, of content, of money, ah, who’s going to sort all this out? 

 

Ken / Prof Wiltshire:  Well, I’ve made my suggestion.  I think it needs a nation-wide concerted effort, a mixture of educators, literacy specialists and political people...

 

Sandy:  Is there the political will to push it?

 

Ken:  Well, my message to Alison and Ian is that you are missing the point.  The only way we’ll get this addressed is if teachers and unions get the parents on side. And you won’t get the politicians to put resources and money into this until these indicators are published. Until the statistics are published which actually show the different standards and levels between schools, or between regions,  no politician is going to be motivated to put more money into the system.  You’ve got to have the indicators. That’s why I am sure Dr. Kemp talks about the cult of secrecy.  The whole debate we have had this morning sounded like educators wanting to keep the problem in-house, saying ‘they’ll address it’,  ‘don’t tell the parents’,  ‘don’t keep the Australian public informed’, but if there is one thing I do know it is the political  system in this country. And until you get a good effective measure that a politician can understand, then you won’t get the subsequent action.  So that’s one factor...

 

Sandy:  Alright, so let’s lift the lid off the secrecy, and let’s say  - is it not true that, no matter what we do, we are always going to have a third of our school population with some sort  of problem with literacy.. ?

 

Ken:  No, I don’t think that is true at all. Compared with other countries, Sandy, I think this problem can be addressed. Worldwide now, the number of illiterates has been reduced by hundreds of millions since the International Year of Literacy. There is plenty of evidence to show that concerted action on this can reduce the levels of illiteracy way below the sort of level we currently have in Australia. 

 

Sandy:  Ken, thanks for your time today, it’s been great. 

 

Ken:  My pleasure...

 

Sandy:  Professor Ken Wiltshire from the University of Queensland.   Let’s take a couple of calls to finish on today, and let’s go to Mount Victoria and Fiona. Hallo Fiona.

 

Fiona:  Hi ......  I’m a LEO, which is a Literacy Enhancement Officer, and I graduated last year,  and I have applied to over forty schools, but because they don’t have the funding to employ me,  I can’t help.  And I’ve been working part time at some schools.  And we have found that with mine and other help, the literacy levels have risen, and we’re not getting so many problem kids,  but this is one of the problems that the  government trained us to do this,  and we can’t get a job....  because there’s no funding in the schools....

 

Sandy:  Fiona, thank you.  And very quickly, Tony, if you are very quick we’ll  just slip you in.   Hi, Tony..

 

Tony:  Ah, hi...My feeling is that, I agree with Jennifer that we’re subject to all these fashions,  and there is no attempt to look at the child’s development holistically. I think that if educational theorists were to get their hands on kids before they could walk or talk, then we’d probably have a whole lot of chair-ridden mutes...

 

Sandy:   That doesn’t sound very kind!    We’ll leave it there........