Dyslexia, Education, education reform, Educational Research, reading, Science of Reading

The Zombie Politics of Marketing Phonics: “There Is a Sucker Born Every Minute”

Consider the following claims about reading proficiency in students and the teaching of reading in the US:

  • No one teaches phonics.
  • There is a phonemic awareness crisis.
  • Direct, systematic, and sequential phonics is the only way to go.
  • Decodable texts are important.

I suspect that most people concerned about education and reading who pay even a modicum of attention to mainstream media will find these claims not only applicable to the current state of reading but also true.

However, there is a problem, which prompted this post from Rachael Gabriel:

As Richard Allington details, these claims are simply not scientific, ironically, even as advocates of the “science of reading” repeat claims that have been standard but misleading arguments for decades.

Since at least the 1940s, these phonics-centered claims have been compelling for the media, the public, and more recently political leaders; yet, “there is no indisputable evidence of a national crisis in reading, and even if there were a crisis, there is no evidence that the amount of phonics in classrooms is necessarily the cause or the solution,” as shown by David Reinking, George G. Hruby, and Victoria J. Risko.

At the core of the phonics frenzy is market, and as Allington noted in the late 1990s, “There is a sucker born every minute.”

I recommend reading Allington’s piece in full and the following reader for context and much more complex and accurate understanding of reading proficiency and the teaching of reading: