http://www.arts.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf

-Women read more than men.

-Reading is on the decline.

-Writers are increasing in number.

-Reading rates increase with education level, income.

-The percentage of young readers (18-24) is declining at a much faster rate than any other demographic.

Brian

I think illiteracy, or lack of reading, is something we should always be concerned about. I would assume they are not counting reading people are doing on the internet.

Think medieval period--all readers were also writers, because the art of reading was so specialized.

In the age of modern literacy, the act of reading is common. But the art and practice of reading may be becoming more specialized.

Of course, this is all based on memory.

But seriously, you are dead on about phonics. Every so often the education field cycles and decides phonics isn't good enough and tries dumb ass (sorry, there's no better way to put it) techniques such as whole learning and the like. Sometimes they want kids to "think" and learn to use "reasoning skills" and so if they spell it kat then that's ok because they're trying to sound it out. Ugh!

Why?

Because when I see a word or phrase, I do not need to vocalize it. The unit as a whole is already in my mind, and recalling it requires just a few prompts.

"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruits are sweet."

Someone needs to write phonics readers that are actually fun and interesting to read!

As I understand it, this is essentially the basic description of most "phonics" programs, learning only a few words and representatives of the alphabet by rote, then learning by reading age appropriate material using the basic logic of our writing system, till literacy is achieved.

The main problem with phonics is that the least phonetic group of words in English is the one containing all the simple words that kindergarten kids already know. Words like "was," "once," "the," "two" and so forth. If you try to use phonics for these words, you wind up confusing the kids enough that they may never understand phonics. And then they'll never get to the point where they can read those words that they haven't seen before.

However, I was at a fencing tournament the day after Rowling's fifth book came out. I was walking around the gym, when I realized that everyone there under the age of fifteen (all the way down to a four-year-old reading with his big brother) had these enormous blue tomes open on their laps. It was not a small tournament, either. There were at least fifty copies of that book in that gym, all in the hands of kids. If not more.

The worst thing I've heard lately as a teaching method for reading was something my friend's daughter is actually being taught in our public schools (I'm a proponent of home schooling for any situation where it is feasible, by the way): she has to look in a mirror while saying words (instead of looking at the word on the page), and she isn't learning actual letters or the words themselves; instead she is learning to memorize colored blocks, where the colors stand for different letters.

I was appalled. The poor girl! Somebody probably got their doctorate from coming up with that convoluted process, but I fail to see how it can help anyone.

The other thing relates to reading aloud, as autumnmuse pointed out. My son has always loved stories--but he didn't like reading. We chose to read aloud to him for years and years. In about fifth grade, he finally started reading on his own. Heck, we still read to him a lot, but he reads to himself a lot too. He's finally learned to enjoy reading as well as just the story.

Do you mean that they won't accept your or that they've decided not to give you a scholarship, though?

For example, 18-24 year olds in '82 would be 28-34 in '92 and would be 38-44 in '02.

It isn't just that people are reading less within each age group, but as people are getting older, they appear to be reading less. But that might not have anything to do with literacy, and might have more to do wtih time. We might have the same number of hours in a day, but I think the pace of life has changed considerably in the last 20 years. I probably read more now than I did 10 years ago, but not nearly so much of it is for pleasure.

Looking a bit at the study itself, I have some issues. Perhaps people are reading less. At least, less literature. And that is qualified by a novel or short story that was read for pleasure and was not a piece of required reading for either work or school. Well, when I was going to school I didn't have a lot of extra time to read anything that wasn't for a class. But I also made sure to take some classes that let me read things that I wanted. I took an early-English lit class and a couple of Shakespeare classes so that I could read what I wanted without taking away from my studies. But according to the perameters of the study, they don't count.

Another thing that bothered me is that the last part of the study was massive. In 2002 they decided to survey a larger sample group and do things far more in-depth. They then compared these results to simillar studies from 1982 and 1992. It isn't as though they asked the same questions of the same sized group every ten years.

Is the information useful? Yes.
Is it alarming? No.
Am I ranting? Yes. So feel free to ignore all of that

As to Phonix... Well, that is the method I learned on and it has served me well. I didn't learn to read until grade one, but I started learning some basics (i.e. A,B,Cs) and was read to long before that. I have a friend who learned using a sight method (I'm not even sure what that actually involves) and to this day, she reads less and has major problems with spelling and grammar. I don't know if the two things are related but they might be.

Regarding the phonics topic, sometimes it's not the method, but how the method is presented.

I would like to share one small story to illustrate, and preface it by saying that I've met some amazing teachers and I have a high respect for the profession. I considered becoming one when I was in college, but got scared away by some of the horror stories a friend of mine told me about being physically threatened in class. And she taught second grade.

The following story is a slam against a technique, not the profession.

My sister learned how to read using phonics. She loved reading and divided her time between that and art (she was a fantastic artist). When she entered first grade, Dad decided to put her into public school (she'd been homeschooled up to that point) for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of her education. As far as I know, the school was also using phonics at the time (could be wrong on that ... my memory's not what it used to be).

My Mom got called into the principal's office later that year and was told that my sister was being placed in a remedial reading class because she obviously didn't know how to read. It took several weeks of talking to my sister and the school officials, but we finally figured out what had happened.

It turned out that each of the kids read the book together, turning pages at the same time. My sister, entralled by the story, would read ahead and lose her place. When the teacher would ask a question related to the page the class was on or ask my sister to read something out loud, she saw my sister flipping through the pages and assumed she was having trouble reading. Instead of testing her, the school just stuck her in a remedial reading course.

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By the way, isn't Rick Fisher the dude from Robotech?

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By the way, my point about putting away toys is that behavior is much worse in schools than it was, say, twenty years ago, and the kids who act up hurt everyone's education. I don't really think that the schools are responsible for this--it's mostly the parents' doing, though the trend is actually societal and the job is probably harder for parents than it used to be--but I also think that the trend towards early academics in schools, instead of early socialization, is a contributing factor. Because crucial tasks, both academic and social, are being taught at the wrong time, fewer people are learning them.

Another thing, I know that a lot of educated adults who don't read aren't reading because they don't have time. When you are working eighty hours a week it's hard to exactly have a lot of free time for relaxing. This is true even for me, when I'm doing a play after school (which takes up several hours a day) I don't read nearly as much.

My point is that I don't think kids are reading because they don't want to. They have so many choices of distraction, and reading is so..."boring". I don't care what anyone thinks of the Harry Potter series...they are books, and it is the main books I see in childrens hands on the rare occasions I see it. Reading is being replaced with sitcoms and other badly written garbage massed produced for the box that occupies many peoples evenings. And yes, I get a bit bitter knowing that very little entertainment is targeted at me, someone who has a job, in preference for kids who don't. Of course, I do have books. Seems there is one market not completely child oriented.

(Yes, it is a shame that things have degraded this badly.)

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You can't get him to read for fun with threats of physical violence.

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I actually would like to meet someone who could be induced to read "for fun" with threats of physical violence.

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Harry Potter series...they are books, and it is the main books I see in childrens hands on the rare occasions I see it.

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And now that they're coming out to movies I bet even that's going to go away soon.

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You don't just look at a work and know what it says when you're four. That happens through reptition, and a lot of it.

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Words like "was," "once," "the," "two" and so forth. If you try to use phonics for these words, you wind up confusing the kids enough that they may never understand phonics. And then they'll never get to the point where they can read those words that they haven't seen before.

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when she came to 'the,' she gave me a knowing look and said, "I'm just going to say 'the.'" No confusion. She knew how to handle it.

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I, too, don't think 'the' is wholly unphonetic, but falls into the more confusing portions of phonics. There is, after all, more to phonics than long and short vowels.

My point is that children taught phonics will pick up many words, phonetic and unphonetic, as sight words in the course of their learning, but children taught whole language too often won't be able to break down unknown words phonetically. The organization I operate through as a literacy volunteer is seeing more adults coming in who can read, but not well, and not with the necessary comprehension. One of my students was in college struggling with reading.

An interesting note: In another city, where the literacy volunteer training I went through used computer programs to help students -- especially with math, which was part of the program to help prepare students for GEDs. One of the instructors said -- too casually for the comment, in my estimation -- that often students mastered the computer math programs, but had a hard time transferring the skills to pencil and paper.

I'm wondering now if learning to read on a computer has similar glitches. Since many people, me included, prefer to read on paper rather than on a screen, maybe we're short-circuiting students by teaching them anything on computer in the beginning of their studies. Maybe computer work should be only an adjunct, not a main method. Kind of like learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide first, before using a calculator. Maybe the computer reading kids do today is backfiring, if only in that they're unaware of the pleasurable differences in reading a book as opposed to a computer screen.

That color code thing just sounds scary, though. Sounds like a conspiracy between the school board and the manufacturer of Ritalin.

After my mom passed away, my dad continued to encourage my sisters and I to read. He started The Reading Program. We received $1 for every novel we read (books had to be at least 100 pages to count); and for every two books we read, we also received a new book.

With the increase of dual income and single parent homes in the last few decades, I sometimes wonder if things like books and reading fall by the wayside while parents opt for "cool" gifts to entertain their children like computers, t.v.s, and video games.

About kids learning to read--yes there is a giant push in the schools to teach kids to read from the get go. No more coloring and naptime in kindergarten. It's phonics from the first day. And now they're pushing for even earlier education, citing studies that say that children in high-risk families benefit from it, therefore all children will benefit from it. Bulls*&#!

The trouble is that most kids just aren't ready to learn the complexities of reading until they're seven or eight. And if they become frustrated before that point they're labeled 'remedial', they learn to hate reading, and when their optimal learn-to-read time comes along (which can be anywhere between 5 and 11 years old) they've already learned that it just isn't for them. Which is why I advocate segregated learning in elementary schools. Let them learn at their own pace and let them learn with children who are learning at the same pace they are. Then, once that light bulb goes off in their heads they can be reorganized into different classes. Class roles could be changed a couple of times a year as children fall behind or move ahead. The REAL trouble, however, with something like this is that the parents make a big deal out of it. It's PARENTS who say crap like, "Well MY boy is in the 'ADVANCED' class," with the clear implication that he is 'smarter than your kid.'

I actually think the schools should reinstitue corporal punishment--for parents.

But the differing degrees of learning progression is one of the myriad reasons I homeschool. We learn at my children's pace. I have the freedom to take it nice and slow on Phonics when little one is struggling, or to let my oldest take off with Shakespeare for months at a time if that's what she wants to do, or to let middle kid skip ahead and do five or six lessons at a time in history because he just can't put the book down.

My son learned to hate reading in first grade because they were trying out some new program in which he had to read incredibly boring phonics readers three times! Not reading to master, just reading to read. If he masters on the first try, why should he have to read three times? At first I stupidly trusted in the skill and knowledge of the 'educated professionals', but soon abandoned it. I'd sign him off as having read it three times when he'd only read it once.

Next, I tried rewards, but instead of money, I rewarded them with my time. They had to read ten books that were a minimum length (100 pages for #1 and 50 pages for #2) and when they finished, they could choose a place to eat and go to lunch alone with me.

That backfired, too, in a way--I'm not all that wild about eating at McDonald's. But it did get #2 reading. (At our first lunch, she told me that she didn't know what to do with me.)

We did this over several summers (and only during summers--in order to get them to read for enjoyment and to not compete with school), with the minimum number of pages increasing, and the additional choice of a movie instead of a lunch.

#3 child was several years younger than the other two, and it didn't work quite as well, but it did work. All three of them are good readers, and they all read for enjoyment.

(#2, by the way, went on to enroll in a program called International Baccalaureate in which she earned enough credits in high school to be able to graduate from the University of Utah in three years with a double major--communications and linguistics. She is now in her second year of law school--lots of reading there.)

Actually, spending time with me probably wasn't as great a motivator for #2, either. Her motivation may have been more that it gave her a way to be competitive, without actually losing a competition.

Anyway, now I think a better motivation for #3 might have been a reward of time spent with my husband.