Looking At Reading PHONICS ARE IMPORTANT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30536, 3 September 1964, Page 15

Looking At Reading PHONICS ARE IMPORTANT

Horace Mann, and later Professor Walcutt, pointed out that the phonics system made the children recognise more words than they could understand or would use. So condemnation was made of the system instead of the material. Professor Gates, of Columbia suggested that children recognise words by clues, such as the y tail on “monkey.” But recognition by visual means caused errors, familiar to all teachers and difficult to eradicate, as “stop” for “spot” and “gril, piont, holiday, cahir,” where letters are right but order wrong. Vocabulary Control To prevent overloading of the memory "basal readers” were used limiting words to perhaps 235 embedded in 7257 words of text. They were called by Professor Trace "dull, insipid, trivial, inane and pointless,” and by “Time” “little red hen types.” Our "Janet and John,” (according to Sylvia AshtonWarner . “an allegedly scientific reader”) was described by an inspector, after its fall from grace as “Nambypamby darlings who do not ring a bell in the mind of the New Zealand child.” The Bishop of Auckland said: “The curtain has fallen on Janet and John ... a good thing that the new books have a New Zealand background; but let us hope that the total effect is elevating.” One wonders why experts accept such trivial material called by Dr. Flesch “horrible emasculated, pointless and tasteless.”

But the Sputnik—not the professors—forced a reappraisal of American educational philosophy. Teachers found that Russian children used 10,000 basal words instead of their 1800 which Trace called “a middle class idealisation of cardboard mommies and daddies in trifling stories.” Our Director thinks . it “wasteful to teach children some things before they have reached a certain level of maturity.” How that applies to the American theory that 6} years is their average for “reading readiness” was not stated; but Mr Gordon Troup considered it as “waiting in dreary suspended animation until the educationists decided they had reached the deadline of maturity and readiness for serious work.”

American books very lucrative for writers and publishers—were so geared to memorisation of words like “aeroplane” that four-year-old John, who knew the letters and liked their sounds, couldn’t read them. His mother wrote a new kind of reader based on “new sounds in place of new words.” Even in its home state Look-say is now “so discredited after 30 years that produced bad spellers” that the author of Cuisenalre rods invented “reading by rainbow” a 47-colour-code now used in 100 schools in seven states. Effect On Spelling Look-and-say teaches reading faster but “casts reason aside, invites chaotic spelling and produces fumbling reading.” Lord Cobham, for the second time, had no doubt that it “enables children to learn to read more quickly.

But it is lethal to spelling and, I believe, responsible for much of the appalling English one hears spoken and sees written today.” The English educationist, Fleming, protested against “the one-sided emphasis on too much looking and guessing” and proposed that reading books should directly link sound with spelling by using phonics because hearing makes just as important a contribution as seeing. Without a good knowledge of sound-values the transfer of speech to writing (dictation) must be faulty. It is unfortunate that much of the difficulty of our language lies in it being only 85 per cent phonetic. With look-and-say no matter how well you look you cannot say if you do not know the sound of what you see.

Phonics has a definite beginning and end and works both ways—sound to sight and sight to sound. In some Canadian schools promotion depends on memorisation. Unknown, though easy, words were skipped with “We haven’t had that one yet.” Substitution was rife because this was the method in use. Seventy per cent did not attempt “lent” though they knew “went”; others called it “let, lend, left.” One parent remarked: “Surely it takes more than an .initial letter to form a word.” Tests Kept Simple Fairly enough, reading programmes test what has been presented; but mastery of the technique is never checked, only assumed. P.T.A. officials in Manitoba tested 600 children, using 20 threeletter and five four-letter words. In one class of 36, thirty spelt the word “jot” in 19 different ways. After six years of look-and-say, 245 children were tested on one-syllable words. On the familiar they read accurately, rapidly and fluently. On the unfamiliar they floundered helplessly. They spelt “groin” in 17 different ways. Some declined to read, saying they “couldn't read at all.” How similar this is to a report quoting Miss M. Simpson, senior inspector at Christchurch: “Primer children in our schools when asked to read unfamiliar material comparable in level of difficulty with their basic reader frequently say *We can’t read that, we haven’t learnt the words." What they really mean Is: “We don’t know the sounds.”

According to Fleming, testing in England is done, as in America, by "putting a circle around, drawing a line under the word, or filling the empty space.” If they can do that they can read. Aim Of Education Are we too satisfied with mediocrity, too complacent, too dependent on the Welfare State, lacking a disciplined approach to work? Only 30 years ago education was "a preparation for living.” Deweyism changed that to “Education is living.” In 1937 Dr. Brunner quoted to the 1937 New Education Fellowship conference the definition: “The whole end and objective of education is training for the right use of leisure.” Have we succeeded in that? In “Intermediate Schools in New Zealand” Watson says that two-thirds of primary heads consider education an unfolding process while the same proportion of secondary principals think their work is to mould pupils for the future. Is more time lavished on the dull than on the brilliant? Was it not Dr. C. E. Beeby who said: "In the end standards are the only thing.” Once teachers were directed by inspectors to test the mechanics of reading: today “Education” asks: “Has concern for the . so-called mechanics of reading reacted to the detriment of redding as a leisure-time occupation?” One official lecturer suggested that in making reading interesting and entertaining its real aim had been lost. Is our philosophy wrong, based as it is on placing the needs of the individual above that of the social order? Is it true that every individual is unique? In England the Augmented Roman Alphabet experiment has 43 sounds. Can the transition be made successfully from our 26 letters, and how will it affect our spelling? Parents will hope it succeeds.

[By P., H. JONES, retired teacher and author of writing aids]