Thursday, November 19, 2009
Reading programs need to be revamped
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Betty G. Price
Price is a reading remediation therapist for Professional Reading Services.
"Seventy-five percent of the country's 17- to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service largely because they are poorly educated, overweight ... " These words, as reported in The Roanoke Times on Nov. 7, delivered shock waves ("Political notebook: Obesity, poor education obstacles to enlisting").
Whose research is this; from where and from whom did this information come? Certainly, there is cause for alarm over poor language skills -- the basis of all education -- and the growing problem with above-average sugar consumption, but the news that only 25 out of 100 of our young citizenry are educated and/or healthy enough to be recruited is cause for either universal alarm for false reporting or red-faced embarrassment.
Consider the lure that young people face today with high technology and ever-increasing gadgetry and games to entice them. Fewer are reading books, magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately, however, too many are having to read the want ads instead or stand in line seeking unemployment compensation.
Though I question the figure cited, I fear more and more for our young people today as large numbers leave school with less-than-standard high school diplomas, inadequately prepared for either the work world or college. There is rarely a day that goes by without some article or news report stating the large numbers of college freshmen who need remediation classes in language, mathematics or both before being able to fulfill class requirements.
We hear the lament of industry as they decry ineptness and inability to read and figure sufficiently to do the jobs for which they have been hired. Parade magazine states that American students go to school fewer days than many other industrialized nations, and the public is bombarded constantly with accusations of poor educational preparation of our youth for the global market.
The key to an education begins with learning to read, followed by learning to reason and expressing one's thoughts. The enormity of learning to read a language that now exceeds 1 million words needs to be revisited and re-evaluated by every specialist in the field. What seems to be happening within the texts of most publishing companies' reading books is a mandate requiring the beginning reader to tackle whole words (by memory) without understanding the how and why of the orderly structure or the knowledge to determine what the vowel sound is. Worse, the kindergarten fledgling reader is often asked to memorize multisyllable words before he has command of a single syllable.
This approach usually leads to guessing when the student "forgets" the word, and this is quickly followed by poor-to-dreadful spelling ability. As a teacher in private practice for more than 40 years, I see students every day who have undergone extensive testing because they are unable to keep up with their peers. Often, a student ends up in special education or with a label that follows him throughout his school career when he needs a more linguistic approach to learning to read.
President Obama states it is time for an intense investigation into the materials covered in departments of education on college campuses. I concur.
Each time I teach a class of teachers, I am asked: "Why aren't we taught the linguistic codes of English in undergraduate school?" Today, I rarely find a student who understands the difference (or how to tell) a long from a short vowel -- or recognize the wiggly sounds of diphthongs, or how to tell which vowels split. In fact, many of the textbooks are extremely unfair to teachers, training them to tell children that when two vowels go walking, the first does the "talking." Whoa. This rarely works.
Another incredibly dreadful "tip" the publishers give us is to "look for little words in bigger words" to help figure out an unknown word. Whoa, again. Does anyone hear "to" in tornado? How about "sign" in signal? Is there "science" in conscience or "car" in caravan? This, again, asks the student to guess when it is unnecessary.
Our language is the largest, most complex, fascinating and exciting language in the world. It is a vegetable soup of Latin and most other languages. What is really fascinating is that these others have structure and rules.
And, if we but pay attention, they give us the clues to our own.
We must restructure our reading programs in America to make certain that solid and basic instruction is given kindergarten through second grade, for I believe then, we will no longer be embarrassed by claims our youth are poorly educated.
