I think maybe we're talking past each other a bit here. First I agree that phonics alone is insufficient and in and of itself does not lead to reading comprehension. I think the evidence is clear there. It also seems clear from the report that England is wielding it like a hammer.
> I mean maybe, but go beyond it and look at the stuff they cite: the report and the PISA study. Teachers aren't just responsible for getting students to sound out words correctly, they need to take illiterate children and make them functioning members of advanced societies. The report has lots of data on how the focus on phonics undermines this long term goal.
Yeah, my issue was that the Guardian piece was cherry picking from the report to make it seem like phonics was useless and not based in evidence. Whereas the report makes it clear that phonics is in fact excellent as a first step, but must be followed by broader instruction in language/culture/literature/etc.
> don't think this is what it says, but either way it's pretty common for academic papers to list ways their conclusions could be wrong.
I was paraphrasing pretty directly from the conclusion section. My point being that the Guardian was making stronger claims than the research supports, or rather the existing research wasn't great and the report acknowledges that but the Guardian obscures it.
I think overall England has probably gone in the wrong direction and treats phonics like the proverbial hammer. In particular there seems to also be a weird trend there in abandoning instruction in the cultural competency required to comprehend most extant English language writing. My concern is that here in the US, teaching has to its detriment abandoned phonics in favor of a whole language model which has proven terrible at teaching kids to decode language.
Yeah I think this is mostly fair. I had to read it multiple times to form a reasonable opinion because it's written in this disjointed style.
I think we agree broadly. The US slept on phonics for some regrettable reasons, we're probably gonna swing super hard the other way and over correct, and we'll deal with the fallout from that in a few years haha.
> I mean maybe, but go beyond it and look at the stuff they cite: the report and the PISA study. Teachers aren't just responsible for getting students to sound out words correctly, they need to take illiterate children and make them functioning members of advanced societies. The report has lots of data on how the focus on phonics undermines this long term goal.
Yeah, my issue was that the Guardian piece was cherry picking from the report to make it seem like phonics was useless and not based in evidence. Whereas the report makes it clear that phonics is in fact excellent as a first step, but must be followed by broader instruction in language/culture/literature/etc.
> don't think this is what it says, but either way it's pretty common for academic papers to list ways their conclusions could be wrong.
I was paraphrasing pretty directly from the conclusion section. My point being that the Guardian was making stronger claims than the research supports, or rather the existing research wasn't great and the report acknowledges that but the Guardian obscures it.
I think overall England has probably gone in the wrong direction and treats phonics like the proverbial hammer. In particular there seems to also be a weird trend there in abandoning instruction in the cultural competency required to comprehend most extant English language writing. My concern is that here in the US, teaching has to its detriment abandoned phonics in favor of a whole language model which has proven terrible at teaching kids to decode language.