Half of Americans can’t read

[Balalabab]

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.

It's not "Phenome" it's "Phoneme".
Please do explain again how your preferred method is the best for helping people deal with unfamiliar words....

I also learned through ‘whole word’ method just fine, and phonics can actually slow some speedy de-coders down.
But I do know quite a number of adults in my generation who are semi-literate, I just don’t work with them. I do volunteer for a community organisation and have to deal with people across the social spectrum, and as an educational professional even I was a bit surprised by how much some people (often in lower income brackets) can struggle.

@TunnocksOrDeath Please do explain again how your preferred method is the best for helping people deal with unfamiliar words....

Yes, the fact that I never had difficulty reading.

And here we are, on a thread in which people are discussing people being unable to read, while simultaneously defending nonsense like "phonics."

Put 2 and 2 together.

Never had difficulty reading... but can't distinguish between "Phoneme" and "Phenome".
You're happy that some other method worked well enough for you - that's great. Research shows that phonics works for a higher number of learner readers than other methods, so that's why it's the first method introduced in schools. You yelling that it's nonsense (because it's unfamiliar and you don't understand it) doesn't change the data.

But… studies show that if you teach children to read using systematic phonics, a larger proportion of them can read successfully than if you teach them using the whole word method.
It’s not the only thing teachers do, but if initial reading is the goal, teachers are less likely to leave learners behind if they use a systemic phonics approach as a whole class tool.

@TunnocksOrDeath Never had difficulty reading... but can't distinguish between "Phoneme" and "Phenome".

You're just being silly now. My lack of familiarity with a single esoteric word does not mean that I have reading difficulties. Obviously, my mind jumped to a familiar word, "genome," which is where "phenome" came from.

Q.E.D

I'm American and can read well, but I'm also from Massachusetts, which is a state renowned for excellent schools. I did not learn via whole word reading as described in the original post. That being said, we absolutely have a literacy crisis in the United States. It's beyond just correct word recognition but spans to understanding nuance, allegories, etc. Our country is so large and there are not federal educational standards, so it's closer to comparing each state's school system to that of separate countries. They're all just totally disparate. I'm not sure if it's the whole word method, but the delta is extremely large.

Quite honestly, you are embarrassing yourself. It has been highlighted in this thread that the state of Mississippi achieved notable improvements in children's literacy after adopting phonics based programmes.

You have repeatedly demonstrated you don't understand the principles of phonics, and yet you continue to deride it as 'nonsense'. There is a saying about the futility of playing chess with a pigeon which comes to mind right now, and is the reason I'm not coming back to this thread 😆!

Interesting some are saying they don’t sound out new words but there’s been a lot of new words (or imaginary words) in this thread and I do sound them out - in my head obviously. A few times, and read them back. That’s interesting because that’s quite similar to the reading back part of the 3 cueing strategy. But I just read back the word - more blended. Not reread the sentence.

And I am reading every letter - but not sounding every letter. I am chunking letters into groups- like Trog-el-hump-er and testing whether I think that works when I read it back again.

re. Phenome and phoneme. I am sounding this as Fien ohm! (like beginning of fiend) and phone - eem (like the telephone phone).

But I am pretty sure I have heard of phenome before - otherwise it might think it’s like the beginning of phenomena (so might read something like fen-om-e). Once you do know a word I think it’s hard to imagine what you would do seeing it fresh.

I think the first is right. No idea about the phoneme.

As an aside I work with plants - I still have no idea how to pronounce anemone. It seems there’s a generational difference. I say An-eh-moan. Some say An-em-oh-ne

Any of the Latin speakers here please feel free to tell me the correct pronounciation 😂

It's an-em-on-ee. It's from Greek, not Latin.

I'm not sure I'd want a gardener/botanist/garden salesperson/florist who didn't know how to pronounce it. It's not like it's a particularly unusual flower. (Or sea creature.)

Lol thought I had it wrong. Half the industry call it that. You would be surprised!

I just googled for Dutch and German speakers and they call it Anne Moan -e (extra E)

Since the New perennial movement became popular the industry is heavily influenced by these countries so it’s not surprising some have copied their language.

Weird thing I also discovered - there’s also a whole bunch of people who are convinced it was sounded as an-enemy for the sea creature. Some swear it was spelt Anenome too. You can find them the Mandela effect forums 😂

But isn’t that what we do when we are abroad and trying to read menus, road signs etc? Once upon a time we all learned by the whole word method but I think at some point we start using phonics anyway based on the words we know. I have a couple of workman in my house quite regularly and I know they can’t read. How can anyone go through 11 years of schooling and not be able to read?

My cousin's dyslexic and a teacher told her to recognize the shape of a word

I think that’s the main reason I am so fascinating by this!

When my in law told me their story, I really didn’t understand how that could be possible. How can you ‘kind of’ read/ read enough to get good enough grades for grammar, but not actually be able to really read.

But he’s not the kind of guy to make things up. And there was no reason to make that up. think it was part of a discussion about dyslexia. Maybe he assumed it happened because he was dyslexic.

He was the only person in his family to get into grammar. His two older brothers both went into dangerous manual trades and sadly have passed early (I think due to industrial diseases - they did damaging jobs and were not in good health). Thinking about their jobs now it’s making me wonder whether they could read. They went to the same school. If my inlaw hadn’t had that intervention then why would things change.

I think this is all really hard to process and imagine for people who are fluent readers. Just looking at this thread and all the arguments about how we read. I am not sure how anyone can be certain of that because the process is so fast. I can only unravel it when seeing new words because the process is slower and I am thinking about it.

I think there have been studies of people in mri scans learning to read - so they watched what brains are doing. Some studies have found dyslexic brains are not behaving as other brains when reading.

Phonics is the tradition way of teaching reading for centuries though wasn't called that. The whole word recongidtion in it's various froms started in USA and is the more "modern way" and was assumed to be better gain popularity from 1940s onwards. When research was actually done comparing methods then it became obvious phonics had the edge - leaving many fewer children struggling with the basic start of reading ie decoding. It's like pervious generations had known what they were doing.

PISA results were on news last night - England which since Rose report is embraced phonics is ahead of other nations and why UK scores high - worrying Wales is now below the OECD average.

What I found worrying watching the news last night was the endless parade of eduational people saying how proud they were of the welsh education system. Proud of kids and staff I could get but a system underpreforming seems odd TBH.

Phonics isn't mandated yet in Wales - though I suspect issue are wider. Endless excuses do not help either - money does help and money per student is often low in wales - but while Londons result imporvement has been linked to money injected there are regions in north of England now seeing similar improvements with out the injected cash.

The new welsh government is due to publish their ideas - so maybe that will help.

Doesn't everyone have to learn some Welsh in Wales?
Even though very few naturally speak it ?
Could that be a factor ?
Someone I knew was at school in Ireland when suddenly all schooling had to be done in Irish.
Everything. Arithmetic. History. Scripture. Poetry.
They were not in an Irish speaking area and he resented it very much.
It put him behind In his schooling.
Learning it as a subject like we do French would have been OK but to not be allowed a word of English even in the playground was harsh.
It was a political decision of course and reversed shortly later when the results were evident.
His younger brothers did much better when Irish was relegated to a subject among other subjects.
I know it's not that bad in Wales.
Just got me thinking.

Doesn't everyone have to learn some Welsh in Wales?

My DC started education in England where they learnt some French in primary in their school and area from reception onwards- then we moved to wales - english medium -- and instead of learning bit of French -colours counting simple greetings they did welsh in primary to a similar level TBH.

Plus areas of wales where there are native speakers and kids are 15 in welsh medium education they take the Pisa tests in welsh.

So personally I do not think the learning of welsh is the issue at all round the pisa results.

I've no data to tell me why Wales is on a marked downward track. NI is after England then Scotland - both lower than England but above OCDE average then Wales is only one falling below. England is only country in UK that manadates phonics usuage in early learning to read stages and seems to out stripping other UK countires in PISA results.

I suspect phonics is part of it mainly as areas that have adopted it like England and Mississippi have seen marked improvements in reading levels - but I also suspect it's not the whole answer - as phonics is a tool kit not a sliver bullet to slay all reading problems.

Wow really interesting thank you. Do you know what you were watching because I would like to watch too?

Thank you

Not entirely sure what you are asking for - Google AI will summeraise which bits of brain were doing what when - and there are some research papers which are public you can read.

There's also youtube videos that looks at this area - from talks to made for you tube explination videos.

^^This is good goes into explains what science thinks is happening and why learning at start to read isn't how we do it later and the whole elephant vs trunk debate - which is more complex.

I think I first this touched on as part of an OU course I was doing covering psychology and neurology - looking at brains and and how we work out what does what - there a knitting example - two ways to knit so they could see automation vs learning and having to think about a task being done in MRI machines, then as I was dyslexic looking further.

Thank you! I will watch these.

Sorry very unclear… I was asking which news you had watched.

If you are interested - it's a more indepth look at Wales education system rather than the defensive sound bites I was seeing on day of PISA results.

I did find long interview with current Plaid Cymru interesting she came across as measured and sensible and determined - so finger crossed it improves.

ITV did look at welsh reading last year.