Major Causes of Illiteracy - Essay Example

Illiteracy and its Causes According to the book Turning Back the Tide of Illiteracy, studies in both Israel and Cuba revealed that these countries were experiencing elevated illiteracy rates after instituting sight-based reading techniques into their early reading programs. The problem was solved in each instance by their returning to a thorough phonics system. These countries’ governments have the ability to implement educational policies nationwide without delay. They looked at the vast evidence supporting phonics and took action unilaterally (Hoerl, 1997). This has also been shown to be the case in Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Russia (Adams, 1990). The U.S. does not have this capability which many have argued has led to a great increase in the levels of illiteracy in the country. According to a US government report, The State of Literacy in America, released in 1998 by the National Institute for Literacy (NIL) (cited in Roberts, 1998), there has been a significant growth in illiteracy in America. “Over 90 million US adults, nearly one out of two, are functionally illiterate or near illiterate, without the minimum skills required in a modern society” (Roberts, 1998). Many experts have blamed this failing on an educational system that focuses almost exclusively upon a sight-based reading program that has proven to be ineffective for the majority of learners (Hoerl, 1997). Not surprisingly, there is a very high rate of illiteracy among children and young adults in the juvenile justice system according to a study revealed in the book Retarding America the Imprisonment of Potential. It has been shown that these kids who learn to read while incarcerated have a strikingly lower recidivism rate than those who do not. Despite these findings, the majority of juvenile and adult prisons, as well as many schools and adult assistance institutions, teach the sight-based reading system (Brunner, 1993). Unquestionably, the debate regarding reading education methods have brought about emotional responses from all those affected for over a century. Why Johnny Can’t Read, written by Rudolph Flesch in 1955, sparked a nationwide discussion. Flesch suggested that practically all reading problems experienced by children in the U.S. were caused from educators and publishers who had banned together in an effort to deny phonics instruction. Following the publication of Learning to Read: The Great Debate (Chall, 1967), an evaluation of all published research to date on the effects of various approaches to beginning reading instruction, extensive discussion again erupted within educational groups. Studies since that time have caused similar intellectual commotion but as yet neither practice has been universally adopted nor the debate ended. No credible evidence has been presented which demonstrates that a meaning and literature-based reading program is unable to effectively teach word identification as well as the use of phonics skills. On the contrary, it seems that “a meaning-based program can and must include systematic instruction in phonics, combined with other word-identification skills that form an effective, efficient, and balanced word-recognition strategy” (Chall, 1967). There are those within the debate that think phonics and word-identification skills instruction is pointless because children are naturally able to learn how to read without these teaching methods and that they should learn by simply being read to and by being encouraged to read good books. This is, of course, dismissed by the vast majority of educators. Children who have not been exposed to at least casual opportunities for literacy learning in the home will enter school with a clear disadvantage. Students that come from a home that speaks a different language than what is taught in local schools will also have a great challenge if they are required to learn both the spoken and written unfamiliar language at the same time. While some children come to the first day of kindergarten already knowing how to read, children seem to learn with little systematic instruction. However, these early readers “constitute only about one percent of the population of beginning readers” (Pikulski & Tobin, 1988). It is unreasonable to generalize this small group from the remaining 99 percent. Several studies regarding the issue consistently deduce that early and organized instruction in phonics skills has the resulting outcome of higher achievement levels in reading comprehension. After a careful review of the research, “the issue is no longer, as it was decided several decades ago whether or not children should be taught phonics. The issues now are specific ones of just how it should be done” (Chall, 1967). The conclusions reached after extensive research studies over a long period of time offer some proposals of how to effectively implement a phonics program. As has been established, phonics instruction by itself is not sufficient and should be part of an interconnected program. To learn to read competently, according to these studies, students should practice visualizing and deciphering words that they can identify with. The purpose of teaching word-identification is to create a conduit from the student’s eyes and ears and printed words to meaning and context. This can most effectively be accomplished when phonics instruction is a component of a reading program that provides sufficient training in reading and writing. “Encouraging children with connected text can show them the importance of what they are learning and make the lessons in phonics relevant and sensible” (Adams, 1990, pp. 93-94). Various methodologies to reading suppose that students learn via differing methods. The phonics emphasis in reading has grown a great deal from the behaviorist theory of learning while sight reading draws from the constructivist learning theory which is based on research of animal behaviors. In these studies, animals learned to do tasks when they received rewards and they learned to stop behaviors that were punished or not rewarded. Behaviorist learning theorists have a propensity to utilize rewards such as grades or gold stars rather than intrinsic rewards for example the self satisfaction felt after successfully completing or learning a difficult undertaking. The constructivist learning theory is based on the concept that children learn by linking new information to previously learned information. “If children cannot connect new knowledge to old knowledge in a meaningful way, they may with difficulty memorize it (rote learning), but they will not have a real understanding of what they are learning” (Reyhner, 2003). The positives of phonics are that children learn effective ways to decipher new words that they aren’t accustomed to. Also, children with disabilities can learn how to read more easily with phonics, especially those who are afflicted with dyslexia. Dyslexic children who receive effectual phonics training early in their education have significantly fewer problems in learning to read throughout higher grade levels than do children who are not identified or facilitated until age 10. Some argue that phonics instruction also carries disadvantages in that teachers tend to rely solely on phonics drills instead of ‘real lessons’ with actual words. In addition, phonics puts strong emphasis on repetitive deciphering which has the potential to become a frustrating assignment for students, making reading less than enjoyable thus retarding progress. “The rules and rote learning it entails are stifling and may cause children to develop the attitude that reading is a chore. If only taught phonetically, however, a child may have difficulty understanding the full meaning of a text, due to the constant breaking down of words into parts” (Curtis, 1997). Sight-based reading is acclaimed for providing children with real text while at the same time motivating students to read for enjoyment. It is always positive for young readers if their teachers can get them to consider reading as entertainment. Proponents of sight reading also believe that this method further assists students in that they learn words in context which increases their general comprehension. Some of the disadvantages are that students will omit words they cannot understand and may never learn them. Also, instructors who teach sight reading alone “never fully teach their students how to decode the alphabet” (Heilman, 1998). The student trained with phonics decodes unknown words comparatively effortlessly. After a few moments of ‘sounding a word out,’ the student usually identifies the word as being an audible one that they know already. The non-phonics student must either request someone to pronounce the word or worse yet must go through the protracted chore of looking it up in a dictionary, in which case the student may be further hindered and frustrated by being incapable of deciphering unfamiliar words in the definition. During the early reading years, most written words are unfamiliar to the student and because of the great amount of time and effort involved in performing dictionary searches, non-phonics students begin to avoid textual content which includes unknown words. Phonics students, by contrast, have no such discouragement and they are much more inclined to believe that they can read just about everything. Advocates of each method have deduced that some type of compromise between these two methods can be arrived at. Many studies have verified the increasing beliefs amongst educators that students can profit from both types of instructional systems. There has been much discussion regarding the potential benefits to children from the integration of both sight-based and phonics programs into the same reading classes. Some professionals think that phonics should not be taught first, but inserted “when the teacher observes a student making constant errors while reading, giving the student a ‘mini-lesson’ of word sounds so that they are able to read the word and continue in the whole language process” (Cromwell, 1997). Combining the two, in whatever way deemed necessary for the individual student, would provide for increased levels of comprehension. Most educators have been attempting to find appropriate ways to incorporate phonics into a sight-based curriculum. A survey related to the phonics versus sight-based debate found that “a majority of teachers embrace a balanced, eclectic approach to elementary reading instruction, blending phonics and holistic principles and practices in compatible ways” (Baumann, 1998). These teachers strive to teach meaningful phonics within the context of literature. The teaching of an entire nation of students without certifiable evidence of the sight-reading method’s effectiveness has proven a serious mistake for millions of children over several generations. Illiteracy has been on the rise for at least the past four decades, and yet sight reading continues to be taught all over the country. While students do recognize familiar words as a whole and many learn to read for themselves, unfamiliar words remain an obstacle using this method. Reading instructions must include deconstruction of the written word into its component sounds then reconstructing the complete sounds of the word, in other words employing phonics, if beginning readers of any age are to effectively learn to enjoy reading and begin to beat the cycle of illiteracy that has been established in this nation. Works Cited Adams, Marilyn Jager. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, Reading Research and Education Center, 1990. Baumann, J. & Hoffman, J. Where Are Teachers’ Voices in the Phonics/Whole Language Debate? Results from a survey of U.S. elementary classroom teachers. Vol. 51, I. 8, p. 636. Brunner, Michael S. Retarding America: The Imprisonment of Potential. New York: Halcyon House, August 1993. Chall, J.S. Learning to Read: The Great Debate: An Inquiry Into The Science, Art, and Ideology of Old and New Methods of Teaching Children to Read. New York: McGraw Hill, 1967. Cromwell, Sharon. “Whole Language and Phonics: Can They Work Together?” Education World. (1997). July 14, 2007 Curtis, Jenny. “Phonics vs. Whole Language: Which is Better?” Knowledge Share LLC. (1997). July 14, 2007 Heliman, A. Phonics in Proper Perspective. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill, 1998. Hoerl, Marguerite Field. March 1997 Turning Back the Tide of Illiteracy. New York: Halcyon House, 1997. Pikulski, J. J., & Tobin, A. W. “Factors Associated with Long-Term Reading Achievement of Early Readers.” National Reading Conference Yearbook. Vol. 38, 1989, pp. 123-33. Reyhner, Jon. “The Reading Wars Phonics vs. Whole Language.” (January 29, 2003). Northern Arizona University. July 14, 2007 Roberts, Larry. “Illiteracy on the Rise in America.” World Socialist Web Site. October 14, 1998. The International Committee of the Fourth International. July 14, 2007 < http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/oct1998/ill-o14.shtml> Read More