[senco-forum] Re literacy

Graeme

The choice of visual representations of sounds was a natural development over thousands years which rendered literacy possible for the vast majority of peoples.  I have never claimed that it is perfect and for you to suggest that I have is frankly, disingenuous.  You also accuse me of making assumptions without saying what these assumptions are. How on earth are you advancing the cause of APD with such self-evidently inaccurate statements?

To Barbara

Of course, most of us have to decode complex words now and then. Even children taught synthetic phonics still encounter the same minor difficulty in saying very occasionally occurring, chemical or medical words but this is not a significant barrier to progress.  Also of course, reading complex things is unlikely ever to be a significant factor in the lives of the children on whose behalf I am campaigning.  What I want for them is functional literacy - the ability to read a page of a tabloid newspaper - the information on a medicine bottle - the directions on a singpost and the ability to complete a simple form.  At the moment, they leave school being able to do none of these things.  This is eminently achievable and it is a skill they are being denied by the very people who are paid to provide it.  I think we will have to agree to disagree about the ethics of teaching children wholly unnecessary things - it is certainly not good teaching practice to subject children to a great number of lessons on a subject for which they have no need.  I was not taught by SP but I'm quite sure I was not disadvantaged by this fact.  One infant teacher who 'lurks' said that what I support is precisely what is done in her school and that only a very small number of pupils are failed by it. These then  receive formal assessment'  For her own reasons, she chooses not to make her views known of the forum.

This forum represents those with collectively more experience of dealing with failing readers than any other group in society and even we are still spinning around in ever decreasing circles.  This is precisely why the DfES  can continue to heap one disastrous, illogical and ill-considered  'initiative' after another on us and why another hundred thousand UK citizens will continue to graduate illiterate from school every year, quite unnecessarily. In these circumstances,  to campaign for children to be taught something that they have no need of would be a step to far for me and I am have long been in favour of synthetic phonics.

Eddie C.