We are constantly subjected to reports indicating only X% of 4^th grade students in X blue city are reading at grade level. Let’s say that number is 18%, which is easily within the normal range of such reports, which probably means the number is lower.

If 82% of those kids can’t read at grade level, which means they’re functionally illiterate or close to it, how did the 18%, given the same teachers and lack of instruction, manage to acquire literacy?

Contemporary education is fad-based. The real money in education is in administration, and the key to getting those jobs is establishing, or supporting current fads. Lower-level administrators wanting to become superintendents attend conferences where people like them present their newest, “change the face of education” innovation. Such things are usually merely repackaging old, failed concepts with shiny materials and euphemisms. “Details” in writing instruction become “golden bricks.” See how much better and more effective that is? But millions are at stake, and baby administrators convince their school district to buy and implement the brilliant new concept. With big bucks involved, everyone pretends it’s the slickest thing since sliced bread until the next fad comes along, the old one is quietly abandoned and the process begins anew.

Thus are baby administrator resumes for superintendent positions built. The point is not that fads are failures before they’re implemented. The point is the brilliance of baby administrators in finding and implementing ever more and more expensive jobs for administrators.

Such a fad, and a particularly damaging one, was “whole language,” which replaced the old and uncool phonics:

Whole language is a pedagogical philosophy that emphasizes a meaning-based approach to reading and writing. This philosophy was born out of research published by American linguist Kenneth S. Goodman beginning in the 1960s, who argued that children should be allowed to acquire the skills of reading and writing in the same way that they naturally acquire spoken language skills. Teachers who put its principles into practice will gravitate toward engaging children in the meaning of a text, rather than merely teaching them how to read it.

Kids were expected to learn to read by looking at words and their “context,” without having any idea how the sounds that make up words make them coherent. Without the ability to sound out letters into simple words and make sense of them, we can’t decode more complex words or understand written language. Young brains are sponges for learning languages, which includes the written word. Failing to properly teach them how to decode symbols and sounds—reading—cripples them for life.

If one can’t make sense of even single-syllable words, if trying to decode even simple sentences is time consuming and frustrating, by the fourth grade kids are going to be functionally illiterate, as we’re now discovering to be the case.

Teaching high school English I discovered several disturbing realities. Whole language kids were terribly damaged. Phonics kids weren’t. Most teachers, even English teachers, aren’t regular readers. Most kids read only the bare minimum necessary for school assignments. Even Advanced Placement (AP)—Gifted and Talented—kids won’t read all of their assigned reading, and some won’t read any of it. They’re used to being able to fake their way through. AP kids are virtually all fluent readers. They can read aloud with proper pace and accomplishment, but they don’t like it. They don’t read for pleasure. 

Non-AP kids don’t read for pleasure because reading isn’t a pleasure for them.

Graphic: Author

For the final few years of my career, I taught a mythology course using primarily a college level text. I quickly discovered unless we read each selection aloud in class, and I spent time explaining the related history, cultures and vocabulary, my kids would not have read anything and would have learned nothing. I usually had to read most of each story, as we just didn’t have the time necessary for slower kids to struggle through a page or two.

It was enormously frustrating and sad. The ability to read fluently and understand what one reads is fundamental to success in every other academic discipline, in life. 

By the time kids get to high school with badly deficient reading skills, there is virtually nothing that can be done for them. High school teachers have a curriculum to cover and no time to make up for all those years of missed learning.

So how did the 18% manage to learn what the 82% didn’t? Their unique genetic endowment and personal qualities allowed them to better pay attention and to assimilate whatever instruction they got. Perhaps they also had teachers who snuck phonics in while pretending to be all in for Whole Language. Perhaps their parents helped them. And perhaps they really loved learning and intuitively understood reading was essential.

Perhaps we owe every kid that understanding and those opportunities.

On a different subject, if you are not already a subscriber, you may not know that we’ve implemented something new: A weekly newsletter with unique content from our editors for subscribers only. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription. 

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.