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Original poster

Half of Americans can’t read

205 replies

Balalabab · Yesterday 16:32

So the title is slightly clickbaity I feel.

But this is what is being said in a podcast I am listening to called ‘Sold a story’.

Ironic if the title is wrong considering the name of the podcast 😂

Anyway.. story goes that in Covid a bunch of adults all over the US realised their children couldn’t actually read.

What they had been taught to do was learn a bunch of words by sight, and then as reading became more complex they would look at the first few letters and guess from the context.

One of the example given was instead of ‘Poland was invaded by Germany.’ Someone who used this method read ‘Poland was invited by Germany.’

This reminded me of a story my in-law told me (he is mid 60s) of how he couldn’t actually read. And it was only when he went to his grammar school interview and asked to read a text did they recognised he couldn’t actually read. He knew he couldn’t read. That made absolutely no sense to me until I heard this podcast about people who are effectively half reading. Going through the motions and faking it. But who actually cannot read.

My mind is blown. And I am gripped by this rabbit hole.

In America; this ‘whole word’ method of reading has been a political war for the past 60 years. Politicised to be a left vs right issue and has now been called by some ‘The reading wars’. I have asked tried to ask on Reddit about this 3 times and every time it has been deleted. I don’t know if that’s denial of the issue, embarrassment, or just Reddit being Reddit.

Anyway this has really captured me. Has America fixed this? Do we have this problem in UK as we were using this teaching method many years ago too? How many British people can’t actually read? Whats going to happen to the Gen Z’s who can’t read!

And finally a down the rabbit hole fact for you - that image of Bush sitting in a classroom when 9/11 happened. The most famous image of Bush seen by nearly everyone in the developed world. He was in that school because he was trying to ban ‘whole word’ learning and push phonics first learning. This has really has been an invisible elephant in the room.

OP posts:
drspouse · Yesterday 16:46

seahorsessky · Yesterday 16:44

It's possible to sound a word out using phonics and not know what it means.
Gleb.
Bamp.
You can read them...
Equally, some children did learn to read "whole word" and could read whole novels at 5.
So it's not about the method, and there's many different phonics schemes. All aspects of reading are important.

It really isn't.
Phonics is needed to read new words.
The US was very behind compared to the rest of the world in using phonics teaching.
This is a very good podcast @Balalabab .

foriamtheratofthehighway · Yesterday 16:44

This is interesting actually- my daughter is 5 and just started year 1. I think she can read (or read as well as is expected at her age anyway), but sometimes she gets a word wrong and has said the word she thinks it should be from the context, when actually it's a slightly different word. In her case I think it's just her brain not quite going at the speed she wants it to, but I can see how it develops into a problem.

seahorsessky · Yesterday 16:44

It's possible to sound a word out using phonics and not know what it means.
Gleb.
Bamp.
You can read them...
Equally, some children did learn to read "whole word" and could read whole novels at 5.
So it's not about the method, and there's many different phonics schemes. All aspects of reading are important.

AirborneElephant · Yesterday 16:43

It also helps with unfamiliar words that my age group learned Latin from primary onwards, so we’re pretty good at etymology in general.

AirborneElephant · Yesterday 16:42

I learned through “whole word”, phonics are completely alien to me. But all of my age group that I know can read just fine - when confronted by an unfamiliar word we sound it out using bits of familiar words in exactly the same way as phonics although I certainly use slightly different individual bits.

So while I agree the scientific evidence is behind phonics being better and therefore that is what should be used now, I think it’s silly to suggest that those that learned through a different method are somehow illiterate. I’m sure there are a few, but I’m equally sure it’s not half of America!