Why are so many elementary school teachers anti-phonics?

Great Debates
21

HA: *Phonics is often lumped in with all the other so-called relaxed, progressive techniques like no desks, no rules, no seperation by learning ability, letting kids grade themselves etc.

Phonics is likened to other great liberal causes like esperanto and ebonics.*

:confused: Huh what? I thought that phonics was supposed to be the conservatives’ darling of teaching tools, and what liberals liked were the “whole-language” methods.

I started first grade in 1971 and I remember them teaching something like phonics. I think it was call ATI & TO or something.

Wow!!! Somebody besides me (who started first grade in 1969) remembers ITA, the Initial Teaching Alphabet!! I didn’t have it in first grade, I went to a year of ITA preschool. It was a “simplified-spelling” approach that used a modified version of IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. Everything was spelled exactly phonetically, with cool extra characters like schwas and diphthong ligatures to account for sounds that the standard 26-letter alphabet couldn’t represent unambiguously.

I learned to read like a streak of lightning (though I may have had some regular reading competence before entering ITA school when I was four, don’t remember), and I just loved it. But the really bizarre thing is that I apparently made the transition to regular reading unconsciously. I still remember the shock I felt in first or second grade when I came across one of my old ITA books (it was a version of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse story, that’s how well I remember this) and thought, “Ha, I remember reading this back when I was little, maybe I’ll flip through it again for fun”, and realized that the spelling was all peculiar. Evidently I moved from ITA to standard-spelling without consciously recognizing that they were different; it was all just reading to me by that time.

Ah, ITA school…boy, those were great days. I often wonder if that was the pivotal experience that made me such a language maven in my later years, and in particular fell so in love with Sanskrit, which also has a strictly phonetic writing system, i.e., unambiguous graphical representation of each phoneme.

Not to be mean-spirited or anything but I remember that it was always the, ahem, dumb kids who got taught this.

Oh well, we dumb kids had to learn to read somehow.

22

If they were teaching kids how to read in Spanish, where everything is spelled the way it sounds… then sure, phonics would be great.

But since a large number of English words are not spelled anywhere near the way they sound, I don’t see how phonics is all that usefull.

I don’t even remember how I learned to read. I can’t remember NOT being able to read. I suppose the whole immersion plan or whatever it’s called worked for me. My mom started reading to me and pointing at the words since I was a toddler.

23

I don’t think I’d want my kids having a teacher who referred to students having trouble “this is what the dumb kids do!”

:rolleyes:

24

Here is the best analogy I know of for the phonics-whole language debate.

Imagine being a member of a basketball team. If your coach constantly has you run drills…passing drills, layup drills, foot movement this is analagous to a phonics approach. basically breaking down a “game” into its subset of skills and drilling those skills. The phonics folks think that you can break down reading into a subset of skills…learn those skills…and then be an accomplished reader.

If your coach doesn’t have you run drills…but instead you just scrimmage all the time…you play 5 on 5 games with no “breaking down” of a skill…then that is analagous to whole language. The whole language folks would argue that you will be so excited by actually “doing something”, or “actual/authentic reading” that the skills will follow your immersion.

As anyone who has ever played hoops can tell you…the best approach is a combined approach. You practice some skills…you scrimmage…you break down the game into areas that need working on and then scrimmage more etc…

In edu-speak, we call this Balanced Literacy.

25

I have my own theory on why conservatives have embraced phonics. Phonics is a rules-based approach to learning how to read, as it has a fairly structured and rigid approach. Liberals have a disdain for rules and “rigidness,” preferring “feel-good” methods where there are no incorrect answers. Just a theory…

26

Well, I’m a liberal, and I think phonics should be taught-along with other methods, of course.

27

I agree with Guin. A child should be taught to read in whatever way works best for that child. Political agendas should be left at the schoolhouse door.

28

I agree. If its an effective method of teaching a kid how to read, then use it.

But what I don’t quite understand is, was the system broken to begin with? When I was in grade school I don’t remember it being a huge problem teaching us how to read. Some learned faster than others (like me :D) but I didn’t see any enormous flaw in the teaching methods.

And on another issue: My older brother is a terrible speller and he claims that its because they first tried to teach him to read phonetically. And that he never broke out of the habit of always spelling that way. But I have my doubts.

Anyone else ever heard someone claim this?

29

On the other hand, sounds have to make sense to you in order for phonics to work; they don’t to all children. I learned phonics in K-1 and it didn’t make sense to me- and I’d already learned to read by looking at the entire words before starting kindergarten and was reading on a 3-4th grade level in first grade. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you’d need to sound out ba-ah-t when b-a-t obviously was “bat.” I quickly figured out that I didn’t really need to do all that “sound it out” stuff in order to get the answers for my phonics pages, so, unless I was required to by the teacher, I didn’t bother to. As a consequence of that I ended up reading at a college level by age 12, but poor at sounding things out. Since I rarely encounter words I’m wholly unfamiliar with now, I don’t have to do many attempts at sounding things out; however hyphenated words are difficult to decipher since I’m accustomed to reading the whole words <shrugs>

30

[praising my mother]
My mom teaches grade 2, however she used to teach grade one. The year she switched, she made arrangements to keep the same group of kids in grade 2, and plans on doing a similar 2-year thing again.

Anyways, at the end of those two years, with my mom teaching BOTH methods, not to mention havinf 11 (out of 26) personalized reading programs in her class, the standard exam results (that the school does internally every year) showed that this was the strongest (on average) class in reading (and in other subjects) at the school in a very, very long time.

My mother is always trying to improve the learning environment - she teaches french too, and uses a puppet as the “french teacher” to get the kids interested, and lets the kids take the puppet home to let their parents “meet” the teacher. She has learning centres in her classroom, where the kids go in groups to work on reading. math. and art. She has developped a reading program that works very well, in both english and french, and has been invited as a guest speaker at the local university to teach about reading in lower grades, and is also going to be travelling to Sudbury to help out a school set up a similar reading program. She ahs challenged her school board regarding things such as being allowed to teach the same group, and shown that it does work very, very well (a lot of people seemed to think it would somehow be bad for the kids). She spends her own money on her classroom to make sure that the kids have the supplies they need - if a kid shows up with no “indoor” shoes, she has (and will again) go to Wal-Mart and buy the kid a pair if its clear that the parents wont. She’s taken individual kids on “trips” - one kid she brought to the zoo - because she sees that their parents aren’t involved enough. She is a dedicated, caring teacher, and is considered (and I agree) to be one of the best in the area.

[/praising my mother]

My point? I lost it a while back. I suppose that to effectively teach a child to read, you need to effectively take that child through each step of every learning process, and to create an environment that is conductive to learning, rather than following instrucitons out of a Hooked-on-Phonics box.

Teachers have a tough time, managing the learning needs of every child, especially when the parents aren’t involved (a lot are, but there are always a few that aren’t). I guess that’s where the pendulum effect comes from - they try one thing, it doesn’t seem to work, so they try another. The thing is, each DOES work, for certain children.

…this was more an IMHO post, wasnt it? I really don’t belong in GD! :slight_smile:

31

I would also have to challenge Crafter_Man on the basis of his OP. Who says “so many” elementary school teachers are “anti-phonics?” Who says teachers are resistant to teaching phonics? In short, cite?

I’d also challenge december on his unproven assertion:

Cite? Earned an education degree or a teaching certificate, have you? Familiar with courses that teachers take regarding how to teach reading, are you? Based on your opinion, I think not. Also, are you of the opinion that phonics is the best way to teacch reading? Perhaps you’d like to provide a cite that supports what you say… something more recent than 45 years old would be great, thanks.

I think Anahita has the right of it, which doesn’t surprise me, since she is a teacher. In my own experience (my wife is a teacher, and I interact with her colleagues often), teachers are resistant to teaching phonics exclusively.

What I think many don’t understand about a whole language approach is that, done correctly, teaching of phonics is incorporated into a larger integrated methodology. True, some whole language programs do eschew phonics, but those are generally bad programs. There are plenty of bad phonics-based programs too.

A good whole language program includes phonics training, but also adds contextual learning and reading for comprehension, not just being able to parrot words. Phonics by itself is just maaking sounds, a poor method of reading. Combining it with higher-order skills and teaching them in an integrated fashion is what most of the teachers I’ve talked to seem to prefer.

Teacher training and education also supports this. The courses my wife took in college and the training she has received since graduating (including her Masters work) does not discriminate to be anti-phoncs. There is phonics-focused material as well as whole language training. I think the idea is to give the teachers options in the tools they choose for themselves, to best meet the needs off their students. While some students respond better to a phonics-based approach, others don’t. Shouldn’t teachers have the option to teach what’s most effective (or most needed) to their students?

The point is that it’s not an either/or proposition; it’s a continuum. Most teachers these days are happy to teach phonics, as long as it’s not all they have to teach. That’s for the good of the students

And yes, the famous pendulum swings back and forth, but fortunately most teachers are too smart to let it get to either extreme (all phonics or no phonics). The best point is probably somewhere in the middle of its swing.

So, unless there is further information to back up the assumption made in the OP, I call it a question based on faulty data. “Why are so many teachers anti-phonics?” Answer: They’re not.

32

As an actual, working elementary-school teacher, I agree with Guinastasia. An integrated approach using both phonics and whole-language is best.

Yet, partisans of the currently favored approach (phonics, at the moment) act as if they’re on a moral crusade. I can remember hearing similarly extreme views from some (not all) of the whole-language people ten years ago. It seems as if none of the educational policy-makers can imagine a happy medium.

(This dynamic of extremes also applies to other educational controversies: math teaching, scripted programs, academic rogor and testing, etc.)

This eternal dance of fads and pendulum swings is one of the worst things about our educational system. Every few years, we teachers are told that everything we’ve been doing is wrong and we have to change everything, and the legislators and textbook publishers who write the new programs almost never consult real working teachers about what really works. It seems everyone knows everything about teaching except teachers, and experience is a political liability.

I’m sick of all this. It hurts kids and demoralizes teachers.

Stop it.

PLEASE.

33

Since when do I need a cite to back up an opinion? Take a Midol and relax…

34

is an opinion statement?

Hey freind, you chose to post in GD. Even if you had said “It seems to me like …” the basis for that conclusion would be fair game.

Could this be one of things that is based on “it depends on how you define ‘many’”?

35

Well excuse me for not prefacing my statement. Must I spell everything out? Only the most dense didn’t realize it was an opinion… :rolleyes:

36

astorian: I differ with you about the Japanese and phonics. There is both the Kanji and the Kana writing systems in use in Japanese. One, Kanji, is certainly “whole word approach” as it’s essentially a character (or group of characters) for a word. The other, Kana, is a phonetic representation of the syllables of the language. The workbooks I’ve seen in Japan for children to learn the Kana were all phonics approach.

37

You’re slaying me here! “Spell out” in a thread about phonics. Hilarious.

38

Since you put the thread in Great Debates… if you can’t back up your opinion (which was stated as if it was fact, mind you), then it’s not worth much. Since several people have called you out on it, perhaps you should think of rephrasing your “opinion.”

By the way, you’re welcome to your opinion, as long as you’re aware that it’s wrong. :smiley: Don’t expect those of us who know better to agree with you, though.

39

In my rant, I wrote “rogor” instead of “rigor”. Duhhy.

By the way, it seems to me people are getting off-topic here.

40

I’m a liberal for phonics. Seems to me there is not enough “science” in education. Was there a double-blind experiment that decided Whole Language was the right way to go, or did someone just make a convincing argument? Same thing for positive self image. Recent scientific studies have shown that PSE is not important to learning.

Of course at some point you switch from sounding out words to recognizing them, but I still use phonics today when I see a word for the first time.