Recently,
the public debate about the best method to teach reading to young children
lit up again as fiercely as ever. You may have noticed this in your local
newspaper. An educational psychologist reported the result of her study in
which she compared the relative merits of the phonics and the whole language
methods of learning to read; the results strongly favoured a phonics-first
approach to the teaching of reading. The newspaper article reported that this
study has been billed as the first hard scientific comparison. Parents were
so impressed with the results that they moved their children to those schools
that are using the phonics program. Even the venerable The
Globe and Mail found this topic worthy of an editorial.
Of course,
advocates of phonics-first and those of
whole language have their supporters and claim their irrefutable evidence,
as has become clear from a series of letters-to-the-editor, some signed by
university professors, respected researchers in their own rights. It is not
my purpose to settle the phonics vs. whole language debate; in my view this
debate is pointless for reasons that will become clear, I trust. My purpose
is to speak about the place and use of methods within Reformed education.
As Reformed
people we
are very much aware of the importance of reading a point that needs reemphasis
when the world around us has become so strongly visual in TV and advertisements,
for example. By conviction, we are people of The Book, and therefore reading
instruction ought to take pride of place on the curriculum of our Christian
schools. I sincerely hope that society's rate of illiteracy, reportedly at
25%, does not apply to our church communities. What would be left of our Christian
faith if the Bible would become a closed book to one out of every four children?
I realize that there may be
alternatives, yet it remains a tremendously important goal of Christian education
to teach the youngsters to read so that personal Bible
reading and family devotions around an open Bible is indeed possible. (Do
invite your children to read along with you at meal times, from as early an
age as possible.) Therefore, we ought to be interested when recommendations
are made by researchers, recommendations which may improve the effectiveness
of our teaching. We ought to be open to new methods, or perhaps revisions
of old methods, in order to help our students as well as possible.
There
are at least three aspects to the recent reading method debate that are of
interest to me.
First, as a reading instructor, I am always on the look out for new ideas
to help provide my students with the best possible background to their own
work as future teachers. Reading research studies is not the most exciting
pastime, I can assure you, but it is my professional responsibility to scrutinize
new findings, and, if convincing, to include them in my own teaching. College
instructors must be up to date with the latest
...
always keeping a sober mind since the latest is not necessarily the best.
Those who attempt to teach others ought to spend considerable time studying
themselves. This is not a search for the cure-all of the best method with
the implied promise that in the future there will be no learning problems.
Continued study provides the teacher with an increasing understanding of the
complexity of the learning processes, as well as with additional tools with
which to help individual students.
Second,
if you have seen the newspaper articles on this subject, you will, no doubt,
have been struck by the strong political overtones of the debate around reading
methods. Stakeholders become fiercely vocal and, if possible, force action.
As results of the study became known, parents started to move their children
to the schools with the "better' program. No doubt, all this will bring further
submissions to local educational authorities to force teachers to use those
"best" methods.
The Globe and Mail editorial illustrates this political element quite
well in its concluding comments: When parents reward the best methods and
educators who yield the best results by moving their children into those programs,
those positive outcomes spread and are reinforced. Are provincial governments
doing enough to put such information in the hands of students and parents?
The answer, at this point, is no. (Feb 25, 1997).
Our Christian schools also know about political pressure. I do not mean this
derogatorily, but I simply want to note that school decisions always involve
people with different interests and views. Therefore, such decisions require
much discussion, negotiation, and, if possible, consensus. If there is no
clear consensus, than someone must decide, always with the risk of criticism.
Often such criticism centres around questions of authority and control. I
do hope, though, that our schools do not suffer from the kind of suspicion
alluded to in this editorial. There must be at all times an open and honest
discussion, without hidden agendas. It is not the particular method that is
important; of importance is the learning of our students. Throughout our deliberations
we must be well aware of the danger to lock ourselves into one method at the
exclusion of all other reasonable options the one recommended to use as, the
best of course. We must not lose sight of the instructional and personal needs
of our individual students. Although it is most valuable to learn about instructional
methods in a general manner, and although there are general learning principles,
it remains true that we do not all learn in the same manner, and that the
usefulness of each method depends on how well it can be and actually is applied
with real children. Simplistically demanding that teachers use the best methods
may not help the students at all.
A third
aspect I want to point out is a generally strong belief that scientific research
can and will provide us with methods of instruction which will really work,
guaranteed. Note how it is reported that the Houston study is the first scientific
comparison of reading methods.
This implies that this reading experiment can be repeated many times by many
others, always with the same results providing the conditions are kept the
same. Thus, a scientificallysound teaching method applied in a Texas classroom
would be equally effective when applied by a different teacher in a different
classroom with different children. The problem sits in how to keep the conditions
the same. One classroom full of children is never the same as another classroom
full of children; there will always be many variables and many differences.
This
is not to say that careful scientific study of the learning process would
be useless. On the contrary, it can help us to describe human learning in
valid and useful ways. Yet, as with the rest of creation, science can never
claim to say everything there is
to say about human action or human learning, and therefore we ought to acknowledge
the limitations of such scientific studies. Although we share many traits
with each other, not one person is quite like another and not one person leans
quite like another. In my view, it is not the particular method employed that
is of first importance in teaching, but the relationship between adult and
child and how they interact with each other. The Bible tells us to speak to
our children, to model for them, to counsel, to comfort, to be compassionate,
to love them in short, to be teacher-fathers and teach ermothers, as Dr. van
Dam exhorted us some time ago. That ingredient cannot be captured in a scientific
formula and it makes teaching much larger than an application of the best
method.
The
teacher in her classroom work must consider her students as persons with their
unique traits and needs. She has to make sensible instructional decisions
and make effective use of the various activities and resources offered by
the textbooks she uses in her reading classes (basal readers, phonics books,
comprehension activities, vocabulary exercises). She has to monitor the progress
of her students, and take effective measures when things do not quite develop
in the manner desired. In order to do all these things, she must have a sound
understanding of the reading process, that is, the necessary theoretical background,
and a wide repertoire of teaching techniques, that is, a toolbox full of sound
instructional methods. Teachers have to make many decisions, and therefore
they need to understand the problem situation as well as possible, and have
available the tools to implement their decisions. Studies like those referred
to above can help teachers to extend their instructional toolbox. Rather than
spend energy in controversy about what is the best method, as parents and
teachers we do well to strive to understand the unique qualities of each of
the tools that are in our toolbox.
What
are the essential tools to help our children learn to read, you ask? just
some examples:
