Phonics Wins In Britain

IN CASE YOU were worrying, here’s some good news. The Brits just decided to give up on progressive reading programs and mandate the teaching of “synthetic phonics” in the nation’s schools from age 5.

And think. It’s only 30 years since British Prime Minister Callaghan

highlighted the “unease felt by parents and others about the new informal methods of teaching” in his 1976 speech calling for a “great debate” on education.

So that’s all right then. Hey, here in the United States our progressive educators have been pushing “whole language” reading methods for over a century.

But it’s been a long fight to get the Brits back to sanity. The educational establishment fought against phonics tooth and nail. The teachers boycotted testing for eleven years, so it was only in 1995 that national tests exposed “massive levels of illiteracy.”

In 1997 New Labour failed to push for real reform in reading, allowing schools to choose between four reading methods. So another ten years slid by while nothing was done.

The present change in policy is being driven by

the results of a seven-year project in Clackmannanshire, which taught all children using synthetic phonics throughout primary school. When they were tested at age 11, they were three years ahead of their contemporaries across Scotland.

Think of that, mothers of America. How would you like your children to be taught with trendy “child centered” methods and end up three years behind the kids being taught the right way. How, as the saying goes, does that make you feel?

The question that all thoughtful Americans must ask is why? Why has this folly gone on for so long? Why have the schools of education hung onto these trendy child-centered educational methods in the teeth of evidence that they don’t work?

The answer is, I think, that teaching kids the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic is just flat out hard work. So the education establishment keeps coming up with new ways to make schooling less stressful and more interesting—for teachers.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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