ive been listening to the podcast "Sold a Story", which reports on the illiteracy epidemic in America (and honestly in the broader English-speaking world, but it focuses on America and somewhat New Zealand). It's investigating why, in the last twenty-odd years, the specific curriculum using to teach kids how to read has changed, and why it's ineffective. I'm only a few episodes in but it's really fascinating. this isn't going to be some long damning post with sources so just listen to the podcast but if you want like a tiny summary about what it's about ill put it below! working in a middle school post-covid has made me really aware that this is a problem.
If you're over 25 and a native english speaker, there's a really good chance you were probably taught phonics, or something very close to it. phonics being like, sounding out words letter by letter when you encounter a new word. from there, you might recognize it as a word you already know how to say (since verbal language acquisition is usually faster than reading) or from there can use context to ascertain the meaning, or look it up to determine it.
If you're under 25 (or maybe older and a late reader who lived in NZ), you might have been taught something else called cueing (or any variety of other names). cueing is a way of learning reading involving re-reading words over and over and when you encounter a new word, instead of sounding it out, you look for cues as to what the word might be, such as the picture, word that came before it, and the first letter of the word.
Cueing was invented by a woman in NZ after studying what she thought made students into effective readers. Her program for making effective readers took off for use as an intervention for students who were struggling to learn to read. through a bunch of stuff the podcast goes into this took off in america as the standard way to teach reading. and turns out it isn't backed by actual science at all. in fact, actual neuroscientists say phonics is probably the best way to create effective readers. but its not what's being taught.
its just insane to listen to. ive always been an avid and fast and effective reader. i started reading early, reading often, and reading stuff at higher and higher levels. i can parse kind of anything easily assuming its not entirely jargon-laden or in some dialect i don't know. but the amount of people around my age or younger who just lack any basic literacy is numbing. ive trained 19 year olds at jobs who had trouble reading the options on the cash register screen. some of the gen-ed kids at the school i work at struggle hardcore, though im not sure how much of that is covid related.
pls listen to sold a story
