Half of Americans can’t read

I (66) didn't do Latin as a set subject but it was part of our English lessons in secondary school and at A level a whole part of the curriculum was dedicated to learning the etymology of words, so we did a term of basic Latin, Greek and Old High German.

Latin wasn’t generally taught in state primary schools in the 1950s and 1960s, let alone the seventies - even in my private, Catholic junior school, where we used Latin on a daily basis for worship, there was no formal instruction in the language.

Why did you use the title then?

How can you say that half can’t read when you mean they didn’t learn in the traditional but can still read even if it’s in a more clunky way. Do you really believe, half can’t read road signs, emails, WhatsApp messages, TikTok posts?

"Many other posters have agreed they also learned it."

Really? And on which threads were these comments?

On this thread there appears to have only been one poster apart from yourself who has said that they learnt Latin at a state primary school.

I went to school in a city of, then, around 120,000 people. I believe that I can confidently say that no junior school in the city taught Latin.

"I’m not quite sure why you have such a bee in your bonnet about this."

To be quite frank, because you are extrapolating from your own personal experience, shall we call it "anecdata", and presenting your own personal story as though it was data.

If you had simply said, "Well, I was taught Latin at my state junior school" then that would be totally believable.

In contrast, saying "Latin was very common in state and private primaries." without anything to back it up other than that you yourself studied Latin at a state junior school, is rather a bold statement to make without being able to back it up.

I have learnt to read other languages.

languages that basically use the same letters like French and German are relatively simple.

Spanish I adore because it is a genuinely phonetic language. It has very clear rules about what sound each letter makes and those rules aren’t broken really.

i also learned Arabic for a while which was uses a completely different alphabet but is still mostly phonetic.

there are also languages like Chinese that are not phonetic at all. The symbols used for writing Chinese are pictures representing the meaning of the words. So for example the Chinese ideogram for Ren which means person or people is a little stick figure.

you can’t use phonics to learn written Chinese.

English is a really odd language because it’s partially phonetic but has so, so many exceptions largely because it’s taken words from so many languages and also spelling fossilised a few centuries ago and lots of words aren’t pronounced like that any more.

so learning phonics will get many children started on the road to reading but it’s not actually enough to get full mastery of English, the exceptions and common words that are not phonetically spelt need to be learnt.

most adults do not read using phonetics unless it’s a new word and even then they are more likely to compare it to words they already know.

I have to read Arabic slowly a Character at a time and it’s frustratingly slow. When I get to the point I can recognise whole words (even simple ones like you or he) I speed up massively

I wonder if the primary schools that used to offer Latin were in grammar school counties?

I'm fully prepared to believe that different approaches work differently for different people. But I find the idea of only guessing from the context and pictures odd. When the picture is of a horse and the child logically guesses 'pony'. What do you do as a whole word advocate? Just ask them to think of a different word? It seems odd not to try and relate it to the black squiggles on the page at all. Would you get the child to look at just the H and think of words it could be that start with that sound, or would that not make sense to you?

Phonics is silly beyond belief. The first time I saw a child use it, I was astonished.

You can't pronounce a word by going through each individual letter and making its sound. That's so so stupid and illogical.

The correct way to sound out words is to trace each letter one at a time and sound the word as a whole. That's the best method which lets you pronounce a word you have never seen. The key is to sound the whole word, not individual letters.

Phonics needs to be banned immediately.

I think they probably can read the words in the sense they can say them out loud.

what they can’t do is tell you what they mean,

phonics is taught in state schools up to end of year 2. After that there are catch up sessions if kids are behind but that’s it, it’s looking at prefixes and suffixes and expanding vocabulary after that.

I was taught with a half hearted mix of whole word reading and phonics by a bunch of hippies who assumed we'd just pick up up by osmosis in the early 80s.

I was taught whole word reading and couldn’t read until I was 7 and then it just clicked. As a teacher who started in 1995, phonics was a revelation! However, not all methods work for all people. Most children can learn to read using phonics but for some, it just doesn’t work and then we have to use whole word recognition. I also wonder how much daily reading goes on in US schools. We have daily 3 minute lessons plus additional reading with the teacher, LSA and volunteers.

I agree - I studied Latin at my private prep in the late seventies/early eighties.

It’s not about not being able to read. It’s about comprehension and attention span too.

So while a Sun headline would read, “Pedo dead!” The same story in, I don’t know, the guardian would read, “disgraced doctor, arrested for historical sexual abuse, found dead.”

The mail would have had the headline, “pedophile doctor dead at 57”.

Some would say it’s a massive stereotype of the people who read different publications, but a lot of research goes into it to make the most money from selling papers.

I think it needs to be a mix of whole word and phonics. Especially with English, because it's not a phonetic language, so you need to learn a different phonetic pattern for each word.

My middle DC couldn't spell until very late on, because he kept applying one "rule" when a different one should apply.

That sounds quite phonics-y to me.If I'm decoding DOG than I start with the duh sound, but then I add the vowel in and, okay it's dah, not duh that is the start of the word. Then I look at the G to realise it's 'og', not, say 'ot' at the end of the word. Then you put it all together to say DOG. What do you do differently? Or is it the duh sound for the D that you disagree with as in the word dog it's not the right vowel sound?

How would you work it out with a child who was learning?

Have a listen to the podcast. There are some people that whole word works for, but in the US, it really hasn’t been working well. Loads of kids can’t read and the people who sell these schemes are now millionaires.

Interesting that your posts on Reddit got deleted.

Phonics is super controversial in the US

I taught beginner readers for almost 40 yrs and did a post-grad qualification in teaching dyslexic adults and children.

Reading is about much more than decoding, readers need to understand what they are reading about.

Phonics is a very artificial approach to reading but useful for unfamiliar words. Try reading "Anna Karenina" and you will see how useful it is to sound out Russian names although after the first few times many people will recognise the shapes.

Most 'natural' readers begin by recognising whole words in context, such as 'cheese', 'butter' on the fridge compartments, 'Persil', 'Heinz' on groceries and build up their vocabulary by reading along with familiar stories, by re-reading them, many times, they learn to recognise word shapes.
If they learn phonics alongside the whole words, it makes spelling easier and facilitates the use of a dictionary.

I don't understand how teaching reading has become a political issue. It's surely obvious that people learn to read using lots of different methods and bits of information. Context is very important. So is common sense. If you read something about World War II and conclude that you're reading 'Germany invited Poland' you have an utter failure to think about what you're reading.

The biggest problem we have with reading nowadays is surely that many children and adults hardly do it. Full length books are seen as too hard or boring. If people don't learn to concentrate on long texts and keep information in their heads, we're all done for.

i leanrt the whole word method not phonics. I think phonics is kind of weird personally plus the books are dire.

You are a bit foolish to believe everything you hear on a podcast - do you REALLY think it’s plausible that half of the kids in the US can’t read properly? Seriously??

I cnduo’t bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

To be quite frank, because you are extrapolating from your own personal experience, shall we call it "anecdata", and presenting your own personal story as though it was data.

The irony is strong with this one....

I can scan read this easily. But I am very aware that other people can’t. Dh can’t easily, and stumbled over some words. Where as I just took it in.

I know that there has long been some debate over which method gets kids reading fluently quickest (although I think the latest data suggests that phonics is more effective at improving literacy rates across a whole population?)

But I don't understand how this has become an ideologically driven, right Vs left (or really, centre right vs further right) issue in the States?