Sold a Story

I binge listened to all 13 of the episodes yesterday. Such excellent reporting. I raised my two sons during this era of whole language and cueing and was glad they both learned to read at home before they entered kindergarten and loved reading so much that we were not dependent on the schools to teach them. But what a travesty for the millions of children who did have to learn to read at school. An interesting concurrent phenomenon: while whole language was being taught, my kids were being taught math with a similar methodology. My husband and I couldn’t help them at all because we didn’t understand it. It never made sense to us that kids were supposed to “guess” at answers rather than learning the actual math concepts. And when it came time to learn multiplication, I asked the teacher about flash cards and memorizing the times tables. This was verboten at the time, and by the end of 3rd grade, when my son didn’t know his multiplication facts after a full year, I made flash cards and we took them on a family road trip, did them in the car everyday and at the end of our two week trip, my son knew them all. Not every method that we learned as kids in the 60’s was bad! As a high school counselor, I have worked with thousands of kids who struggled with reading and hated doing it. I always thought that they just didn’t find what they were interested in reading. Turns out that wasn’t the case; our system failed them and our society is paying a high price for that. Thank you for your reporting.

Retired teacher here. Until colleges of education do a better job of teaching 1. How children read and 2. How to teach reading then teachers are going to be left learning their craft on the job and therefore prey to whatever program comes down the stream. “The science of reading” could easily become one of these trends if teachers have not been taught how to evaluate ideas, trends, and materials. Shame on the school who wants to teach the next generation how to protect themselves from political attacks. No university should consider good teaching a political behavior. I spent an entire career of quietly bucking the latest trend and asking the question: what problem does this “new”idea solve? Few real problems solved; fewer new ideas.

I started school in New Zealand in the 70s and continued my elementary education in the United States in Washington State. I remember being taught the cueing method, and I struggled with reading for years. I avoided reading when I could, particularly once there were no pictures to help figure out what was going on. I had an older sister who was an avid reader who took it upon herself to work with me, and slowly, I learned from her how to sound out words. Now I love reading, but I still am a pretty lousy speller, don’t like to play scrabble, or the NYT spelling bee. Listening to the podcast was fascinating and dredged up so many memories and emotions about my own experience and that of my eldest child as well. Thank you. Thank you.

I’m an educator. I’m married to a teacher. We both think this is the best podcast ON ANY TOPIC we have ever heard. It’s amazing.