The Reading Wars: Understanding Literacy Strategies and Reading Curricula
The importance of strong reading instruction from a young age cannot be overstated. Studies show that students who cannot read well by third grade are more likely to drop out high school, face incarceration and live in poverty. In our last blog we covered ways for parents to foster literacy in their own home but what children are being taught in school is the subject of a tense debate in educational circles and has lead to recent upheaval in the country’s largest public school district - New York City.
The Reading Wars, as they have come to be known, have been waged since the 80s and 90s between two camps. There are those in favor of the science of reading, which focuses on concepts like phonics. The other side focuses on a whole language approach which encourages children to use context clues, emphasizing the understanding of an entire passage rather than how to read individual letter combinations.
As New York City is discovering, the whole language approach by itself is leaving immense gaps in students’ ability to read. About half of children in grades three through eight are not proficient in reading, hence the major reversal. Further there is significant evidence to suggest the science of reading is effective in producing proficient readers.
However, even proponents of the science of reading have doubts about a major switch on such a scale. They worry about a lack of teacher training and more importantly, a singular unified curriculum for any system this large.
The science of reading gives children the ability to be able to decode words and sounds across all texts. It creates true fluency in reading. However the whole language approach fosters a love of reading to children, which as we covered in our last blog, is vitally important to improving as a reader.
Most importantly, we must understand that no one method can ever be best for all children. That’s why MRM Education has a reading comprehension program lead by reading specialists with experience in all the various forms of reading instruction. Where schools need to teach a curriculum to many students at once, with MRM your child can get the personalized reading instruction they need whether that is the science of reading, whole language learning or a synergistic approach.
So who is right in the reading wars? Nobody. Education can’t be a war. It must be a collaborative process focused on student well-being and teacher preparedness so that each gets the learning they need, not the learning administrators want.
