Myth: Phonics is optional, because there's no one "right way" to teach reading

March 07, 2004

Many people think explicit phonics is optional because there isn't one right way to teach reading. While it may be true that there isn't "one right way," consider the following:

"There's no one right way to build a skyscraper" is just as true.

Most skyscrapers are made of steel columns and beams, individually bolted and welded, making a skeleton resembling a jungle gym. But some, like the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysa are made of reinforced concrete.

The recently destroyed World Trade Center towers used an ingenous tube construction to eliminate most interior supporting columns. (Had it not been for the conflagration of jet fuel, they'd be standing today, despite each being hit by a jumbo jet.)

However there's one thing that all the world's skyscrapers have in common. They are supported by forests of driven piles and subterranean columns reaching toward bedrock.

Every single one.

Progressive educators dream of a skyscraper of literacy and they immediately look toward the sky. All of their efforts serve the attempt to reach high, and there are a bewildering array of innovative methods they use in the skyward attempt to teach reading (Whole Language and Balanced Literacy embody this view).

Traditional educators, in contrast, know that literacy must be built on a foundation, so they look toward the ground, grab a shovel, and start digging. It is thankless, dirty work, to be sure (also known as phonics drills) and it might not be much "fun." But over time, after patiently building this phonics foundation (the basis for written language), our stalwart reading teacher finally sees success when the budding reader sees daylight.

Once the foundation is finished, the climb skyward may begin, and the world's literature becomes available for consumption.

Time after time we hear of the "aha" moment from teachers of early reading. That's the moment when the phonics drills have taught enough translation (of symbols into sound), so that the child can actually begin to read.

What is interesting is that before that "aha" moment, the child wasn't doing much reading at all. After that moment, you won't be able to keep that child away from books! Schools that employ this explicit phonics approach (such as using Direct Instruction program) regularly report kids reading by the end of Kindergarten.

Phonics instruction doesn't end there, continuing to teach children the less-common and more obscure spellings of phonemes, or sounds, such as the "Zh" in Dr. Zhivago by grade three. All the while the child is independently reading books without any help from anyone.

Progressive experts like to say, "There's no one right way to teach reading," because they want to eliminate or minimize phonics, as if phonics were just another method. Trouble is, phonics is not a program, it is a body of knowledge!

It is a cruel joke to deny children this knowledge and call it "teaching reading."