Sold a Story again

The first two episodes of Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong became available yesterday. They’re revealing and infuriating. Now I understand what my children’s teachers meant when they said that they used “a balanced approach” — they meant nothing in particular, with only a smattering of phonics. Fortunately, our children learned to read before starting school, as Elaine and I did.

Here’s an example (not from the podcast) of the wrongheadedness that can underlie opposition to instruction in phonics, from an educator who learned to read before starting school. He writes that he

can’t really ever think of “sound it out” as a strategy for me when I encountered words I didn’t know. Asking other people is my go-to strategy even today, as I wander into my 60s.

And how, you may wonder, did those other people figure out how to pronounce those words — if indeed they’re pronouncing those words correctly.

Only last night did it occur to me to wonder: when college instructors outline the textbook in class and give out “study sheets” (i.e., questions and answers) for exams, are they merely slacking off, or are they compensating, consciously or not, for their students’ reading deficiencies?

[And quick, someone get that educator a dictionary.]