Sold a Story | Emily Hanford
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2023
- We welcomed Investigative education reporter and host of the ground-breaking Sold a Story podcast, Emily Hanford to discuss why reading is being taught incorrectly.
There’s well-established evidence about how children learn how to read, but this isn’t always reflected in how it’s taught in schools. Unfortunately many teachers aren’t given the knowledge, resources, and practices needed to follow the educational science. Parents, too, rarely have the know-how to best support their children become capable readers. Over many years, educators have been falsely ‘sold a story’ about how children learn and this has harmed the education of countless students.
Helping teachers, parents, and researchers correct the record on how children learn is key to raising education outcomes in Australia and around the Western world. How have so many educators been sold a story that’s proven to be false? Why have flawed ideas about education been so difficult to correct? How are some educators driving a movement to advance evidence-based practice in schools?
Emily Hanford is Senior Producer and Correspondent at American Public Media. She is host and lead producer of the popular podcast, Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.
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I have often heard researchers say that some children just learn to read on their own without explicit teaching, yet I have never come across a researcher that actually asks parents and grandparents what they are doing at home that might influence the outcome. My mom, with her 4th grade education, showed me how to sound out every word of my in my Dick Jane and Sally Reader. She also bought my kids Hooked on Phonics which I diligently used with both my kids from beginning to end. The school took credit for my hard work, while other parents were left wondering how my kids were "getting it" while their children weren't.
" what they are doing at home that might influence the outcome" Bingo! This essential data seems mostly absent in the discussion. My mom used phonics with me, and I've been reading like a champ ever since. How tragic for those children who never have that sort of input, especially when teachers also fall short.
I learned to read on my own by about 5-6 years old because my parents encouraged me to play reading-intensive video games like Civilization.
I did a masters of education after having done a degree in history, and I was appalled at the touchy feely mental vacuity of the vast majority of my education classes. I listened to the entire podcast, and the contempt of the teaching professors for anything approaching scientific inquiry was obvious. None of these people have been taught to reason. It really bothered me how many of the teachers using a completely useless curriculum only started to care after their own children couldn’t learn to read that way. Not good enough.
I am and English teacher, it's shocking. What is even more was realizing that I didn't even notice because I was raised in it.
In 1993, I was completing a practicum at Port Williams Elementary School in rural Nova Scotia. It was a big Whole Language School. I was doing a 2-week block in resource and was assigned a struggling reader (I still remember his first name- BJ). I started to teach him phonics instruction and phonemic awareness strategies from Jerome Rosner's book. The Resource Teacher noticed and warned me afterward that I could not teach any of her resource students ineffective reading approaches. She was referring to Phonics and Phonemic Awareness (specifically phonemic manipulation, sound blending, and sound segmentation). I struggled in that practicum from that point forward and left the teaching profession (i.e., classroom teacher). It's a system driven by Thought Researchers and not real science. I'm relieved that the system is finally paying attention to what the science says about reading... Math is next!
Education and education training in the U.S. is rife with cultural Marxism. Just look at SEL, for example. Where did it come from? Who pioneered it in the States? Who funds it and why?
Education in the States has been a "captured" institution for decades (really for nigh on a full century, if we begin with the nation-wide, systemic implemention of the Prussian industrial education model).
As a homeschool mom, th revelations in this podcast deeply pissed me off. So many years of being told how I can’t possibly educate my own kids without being an expert. Meanwhile, the experts couldn’t figure out how to Google why none of their students can read, let alone draw conclusions as to how to fix it. It’s just shocking.
Even now listening to the Sold A Story update episodes, it’s all just handwringing how teachers couldn’t possibly have known, the science wasn’t available, etc. huh. Weird how virtually all conservative homeschool parents (ie not “unschoolers” or any other progressive idiotic ideas) figured this out without ever reading a research paper.
The information has always been there, even before modern science figured out exactly why phonics instruction works. Maybe we shouldn’t have complete contempt for anything traditional / old school. Maybe we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel every decade.
My granddaughter finished her masters in urban teaching (bi-lingual) 2 years ago. As a new 1st grade teacher she realized she wasn't fully prepared to teach reading and found Emily Handford's work enormously helpful, both in its content and as a guide to find other material of the same ilk. She studied and studied on her own to learn reading concepts her undergraduate and masters programs didn't emphasize. Education degrees were lacking way back when I was in college. They haven't changed.
I did my undergrad teaching program in CT. We were taught how to write backward-design lesson plans and how to analyze MSV on running records. My other classes had me bake desserts to represent diversity and one class had us be a part of a play based on some political stance on how the Japanese treat dolphins. Yes, this was a teacher prep class and the whole semester was dedicated to creating props for a political play. Fast forward 13 years later and my district is fully enveloped in Teacher’s College (with a bit of a panic on including more phonics last year; insert Heggerty and Dibels). I listened to this podcast yesterday and I’m furious. Thinking about my struggling readers each year and I’m sick to my stomach. I am determined to do better and change the way I teach reading, even if that means I close my door and go rogue.
Have you ever heard of the McGuffey's Readers? Get a set of the original readers (republished by Mott Media now) and just look at how children used to be taught to read all throughout the United States in the 1800s. You will be amazed at the level of reading they were expected to achieve by ~3rd-4th grade levels. I know 11th and 12th grader today who wouldn't be able to read anything competently out of the 4th Reader (which was ~4th-5th grade level back then).
If you decide to go rogue, these definitely wouldn't be a bad resource (the full box set comes with a teacher guide, which will be useful). Paired with a quality phonics program, you can't go wrong (or, certainly not worse than-and most likely far exceeding-the current standard).
The same thing is happening in math education. I wish she would do an expose on discovery math.
What's also frustrating is that math learning disabilities are recognized/diagnosed even less than reading ones.
It’s all part of the same constructivist paradigm of learning that took hold of early education in the 1970s.
Absolutely! And it's glaring how Bill Gates' math curriculum gets celebrated, but the tried-and-true math curriculum of Bob Moses, who was black, is ignored!
I used to tell people that the removal of basic grammar would be as bizarre as if the times table were removed from math, and then we expected students to understand algebra anyway. I thought that sharing such an absurdity would clarify the ignorance of removing basic grammar. Then, I learned that the western education system was, in fact, removing the times table from the math curriculum. Insanity.
Want to help your child read? One of the VERY best things you can do is to integrate as much Sesame Street into his/her screen time as you possibly can. Even using some of the older and earliest episodes of this groundbreaking children's television series. If your toddler or preschool child is going to consume television, make it shows that fill their mind with the basic building blocks of learning such as Sesame Street, Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, The Electric Company, Romper Room, and other newer shows from PBS Kids.
We bought a box-set of the complete Electric Company when my kids were little… So much nostalgia!
Between the Lions flat out taught phonics with lions 🦁.
As an elementary school teacher (2nd grade) for the past 20 years, I have witnessed and taken part in a variety of district mandated approaches to teaching reading. Twenty years ago, we started out with some daily phonics instruction coupled with reading skills practice in both whole and small group settings and lots of time for independent reading practice. It was very straightforward, and we had decent success. We then followed the same path Ms. Handford describes with whole and balanced literacy programs and now the Science of Reading. What I've noticed over the years is LESS time to actually work on the mechanics of reading and comprehension and more time spent on cerebral topics like, "Synthesizing to Comprehend" and "Characteristics of Traditional Literature." If they don't have the basic skills to read and comprehend - which they don't, especially after the lingering impact of COVID and the shutdowns - then synthesizing is not something they are going to grasp.
The 2023 article "Can it be Possible that Something as Basic as Reading is Going into Decline?" may be of interest.
Education’s problem is we want to do all the fruity fantastical stuff, instead of just doing the basic boring common sense stuff like sounding it out. We are outsmarting ourselves and now the kids are getting dumber.
Thanks Emily.You are really a teacher
33:55 "Policy is like a blunt-force instrument [and] always has unintended consequences."
I'm glad to see my library system moving to implement a reading tutoring program based on Hanford's refutation of earlier, ostensibly "progressive" experiments on children.
I learned how to read at 3. I taught my kids to read at age 3. If you're waiting for kids to start school to read, you're waiting too long
Maybe, but that doesn't excuse poor teaching in any way.
That’s amazing for you and your children!!! Starting a child reading at 3 yo doesn’t change learning differences.
It really doesn’t matter how early you read. Just that you actually can at the proper level.
It actually does matter. The longer you wait, the harder it is to fix bad habits.
@@denniswindish4447 It does because kids that can read earlier can start learning more comprehensively before they reach school in the event of a poor education. Definitely worked for me.
I am appalled at the lack of interest in this video! Is there any way in which the equally appalling Minister of Education and the Shadow Minister of Education in New South Wales can view this essential video for anyone interested in education. Let’s also look at parenting styles of the current generation, whereby the child is sent to a variety of educators, be they gymnasts, musicians, dancers. Contrast that with the interaction that once was found in even the working class homes. Parents reading stories, watching and discussing the same things, be it radio or television. Gathering together for all meals, and talking together. Alas perhaps, a thing of the past.
I really liked Emily Hanford's podcast "Sold a Story". The series goes over how the United States adopted a method of reading instruction - balanced literacy - that doesn't work. I think Emily Hanford rightly calls out the lack of academic rigor in schools of education that developed balanced literacy and taught this method of instruction to several generations of educators. If your method of instruction produces a class of 80% non readers you have to start questioning the instruction method. I don't think any criticism leveled at teachers in the classroom is valid. They were handed a teaching method by schools of education and a curriculum by their school districts which didn't work.
Oh I distinctly remember being bad at mathematics my mom was a heroin addict so school was a close 4th kinda deal. Well I tried even calling teachers after school to get help and nothing I'd go to after school help but so many students you'd get the same help in the class room. So I just taught myself what I could sad because people would call me stupid and I believe them.Yeah that was my ex's mother who actually taught mathematics. crazy now they call me a hero because I'm a firefighter guess all that studying paid off you can do it just practice alot
HEAR HEAR !!!
What about jolly phonics
That's what my daughter's expensive private school used. Worked very well for my active little girl!
That's what Emily Hanfords podcast Sold a Story is about. Schools abandoned phonics, which is the ability to sound out and decode words, and started teaching reading using a method of instruction called balanced literacy . Now there's a movement in the US to bring back phonics.
Teachers should be educated and employed in a more tiered structure. Start them off as an associates degree and a low salary, like a para. They can then move on to a BA and be in charge of more students. Masters can be more critical or difficult classes from there. Doctorates should be the hardest classes and paired with subject material rather than education courses. Admin should be drawn from veteran teachers after a significant period of teaching. For huge numbers of teachers who quit the entire process of learning to teach will have been a waste. If they quit at the para after learning they hate it they are out some money and some time. It would hurt but they could recover. The existing system takes 4-6 years and often involves life crushing debt for a job that is safe but not lucrative.
Would you be willing to work under this system you describe?
@@nancydrew5 if it were the system sure, probably would have checked out as a para, saved a ton of money and time.
Pay the apprenticeship the way the trades do, as a living wage, and that would help.
@@rabidsamfan actually a variant of this system has been started in Texas, saw a video about it a week or so ago. The recruits work as paraeducators and get subsidized degrees as they progress.
It's not the teachers. They (we) are bi-products of failed curricula and department heads that push ineffective reading (learning) strategies. Just look at the concept of Multiple Intelligence- another concept that has little scientific support, but the masses are brainwashed to believe this. The department heads bring these speakers in and people eat it up like candy or we are forced to eat it...
23:50 - It's incredible to me that we've reached the point where the failures of public education are reframed in the capitalist-victimization language of "equity." Taking private education out of the equation - everyone already pays taxes, unless you literally have no income. Taxes fund the schools and the salaries of the broken teaching union. The systemic failure of this flawed reading method is identified, yet handwaved away with zero accountability and uselessly victimized language about generalized "fairness." Pathetic.
“Equity” and “equality” have not, does not, and will never exist. It is ALL about the personal responsibility of the parents and the children.
it did disappoint me when they threw those words around. It is simple we need children to read and comprehend otherwise how will lead their lives and even defend their rights or stand up for themselves.
I disagree. It IS the parents’ responsibility to teach their OWN children how to read, write, spell, and calculate basic math. How the hell do you explain before public school was even invented in the USA that HOUSEWIVES with NO formal public nor private school education had children at a 95 percent literacy and numeracy rate with NOTHING to teach their kids except a family Bible and a dirt floor in their log cabin that they and their HUSBANDS built? Also when colonies in America started, they had APPRENTICESHIPS for kids and applicable work knowledge from their own fathers (which often began at 8 years old..there is your vocabulary development). So how do you explain THAT! Nope it is the PARENTS and the CHILDREN themselves that are responsible. PARENTING and LEARNING are VERBS! Adults need to start being freckcing ADULTS!!!! They are YOUR children! ACT like it!!
Most children come into our school already knowing how to read. Parents have learned the hard way they can't rely on teachers to teach how to read. By 3rd grade there are 1 or 2 per class that can read very slowly and inaccurately and those kids get inadequate help. Meanwhile all the other kids are reading and reading more.
I have over heard very experienced teachers saying things like: Read to your child and they will pick it up at their own pace. As teachers have gotten out of the business of teaching how to read they have lost a sense of the nitty gritty mechanics.
What an unfortunate situation.
Emily Sohn (ScienceNews) April 26, 2020
"In the 1980s, California replaced its phonics curriculum with a whole language approach. In 1994, the state’s fourth-graders tied for last place in the nation: Less than 18 percent had mastered reading. After California re-embraced phonics in the 1990s, test scores rose. By 2019, 32 percent achieved grade-level proficiency."
“Most children come into our school already knowing how to read?” Really? What country do you live in?
I understand whats she's saying about schools having the job to teach children how to read, but far too often the follow up does not happen at home. She in a way is contradicting herself, because she mentioned that experiences at home do matter. So same thing if the child receives adequate instruction on school, but doesn't follow up at home, then they'll still be far behind the other kids who have both adequate instruction and experiences outside of school. Parents can't be left out of the conversation/accountability. (I'm a teacher and educator)
Her main point about the importance of children’s home experiences is that children whose families can afford to provide lots of outside enrichment and/or to pay for outside help when their kids are struggling are able to give their kids a leg up over other students. Great for them, but it also masks the problems with what’s going on in school, which just further entrenches inequities.
I see it in my classroom. Students whose parents read to them and have deep interesting conversations with a diverse language use and vocabulary, they do much better. Children are now passive learners and teachers are expected to teach them everything in ten months snd parents only want pretty report cards and not the work that goes into it.
Parents often have no idea what they have to apply at home because the teachers are too incompetent to provide clear recommendations in the first place. If teachers want parents to be engaged in helping with at home learning, the teachers need to be able to communicate it in the first place. Judging from all of the parents in the podcast who had no idea why their child couldn't read, parents are a problem that can be solved later after the professional mistakes are corrected.
This! Parents NEED to work with their child at home. It’s so important because teachers honestly do not get much time to work one-on-one with each student.
Why is it political? Whole word recognition---> we're all passive pattern recognizers---> blank slateism ---> people are infinitely malleable---> kids can be trained out of self-interested/kin preferring behaviors ---> communism can work if we start early enough. It's tortured. But the political angle always leads to the end goal.
Depressingly accurate.
Malarky. Whole word vs. phonics goes back to the mid-nineteenth century.
@@rabidsamfan What malarkey? Yes, it really gained momentum with Horace Mann, but what the OP wrote applies to Mann and other school reformers of that era. Mann was an idealist, a progressive, and a fan of Marx. His work as an educational reformer was fueled by his belief that a regulated/normal public school system would be an equalizer of the social classes and an engine of social reform. He had a lot of good ideas, many of which I agree with, but he was dead wrong about the reading issue. His certainty that children would be better served by eschewing “boring letters” was based in an unrealistic, Rousseauian view of how kids learn.
Tortured indeed. You definitely made some massive leaps of logic. Breaks down right around the blank slate to infinite malleability. Recognizing patterns doesn’t get you to communism…sorry to burst your bubble
I can't wait until the kids who are subjected to this nonsense and poor attempt to destroy society reach your place of business as an employee. You are going to be mad. Have a nice day. I am not interested in your replies because I can't read.
After listening to 3.5 hours of this podcast I get it. I am not the kind of person that enjoys a long drawn out story with emotional people defending their good feelings with the logic "if it feels good it must be good". The current culture of public education is completely broken. Teachers feel they are "good" grade school teachers because they have happy children and deny the fact that children are not learning how to read or get meaning from written materials. I think it is disgusting because these teachers do not know how to separate their emotions from the facts. The harm these teachers have done to our children is for me criminal neglect. Education "authorities" are never questioned for the double-blind studies to support their advice to gullible teachers who were never taught to question "authority" in a responsible way. The corporations that have grown up around the vast sums of free government money are to be expected. The authority of Congress to spend federal taxes on a national school system is evil. Public schools have become a new State religion for every government-run school and it is broken beyond what the national government can fix. Defund ALL federal handouts and eliminate the Department of Education. The centralized approach to education is prone to huge mistakes and slow learning progress. Let the accreditation orgs set the education standards in a voluntary way.
Someone needs to organize a class action lawsuit.
I have seen private and charter school students who don’t know how to sound out too. And public schools aren’t centralized in the US or we wouldn’t have all these school board elections or state requirements.
Because let's blame teachers for kids who can't read. Parents are not held accountable at all for not practicing reading at home with their kids.
You can practice reading till the cows come home, but if you’re listening to the advice from the teachers who’re using garbage pedagogy at school it’s not going to help.
Besides, I don’t hear anyone laying much blame at the feet of individual _teachers._ It’s the fault of publishers and authors of deeply flawed curricula, the educators at teachers’ colleges, and DOE administrators throughout the school system.
Teachers were brainwashed to believe the whole language system was the "best" system. We were attacked when we questioned the experts (professors, lead teachers, principals, head office, dept. of education, etc.). @@seraeggobutterworth5247
Parents are definitely also to blame if they aren't taking time with their kids. However, you still need to have the correct strategies in place. When my eldest were in school we were told to read the same book every night with our kids and to have them use the whole language strategies. If they don't work for a kid at school, they won't work at home either. We ended up teaching our dyslexic kid phonics and he went from only reading comics because he couldn't read anything without pictures to reading novels.
Also, it's better if you listen to the whole thing before commenting something like this. They said multiple times it isn't the fault of individual teachers.