[senco-forum] Re Literacy

Elizabeth

I agree about the advantage to the 18% of becoming literate and have said so, very many times. I regard it as a scandalous dereliction of our profession duty that we allow children to leave school illiterate when we could quite easily, with SP, have empowered them with the gift of being able to read. Whereas you say you are in favour of imposing teaching methods that you approve of in schools, I simply don't agree about imposing ANY teaching method on any school, whether it is one I approve of, or not . 

A few years ago, I conducted a debate on the teaching of reading at a Teacher Training College attended in the main by mature students - mostly housewives keen to return to work. A very high proportion of these student ladies had in fact taught their own children to read before they started school. Every one of them agreed that they would not do so again because by the end of the first year, all of the other children could read just as well as their children could. Indeed some very able children who could not read when they started school quickly outstripped some of those who could read before they started school. The 'initial push' it would seem, did not in practice confer the kind of advantage that it is tempting to suppose it would.

I believe that where children are clearly capable of divining the phonic relationships for themselves, it would be questionable educational practice to set out to deny them that developmental experience and that is precisely what the SP fundamentalists propose. It's a pity that not all children can do this but that does that mean that others should be denied the opportunity to exercise their own natural gifts.  In some of the countries with significantly higher literacy rates than ours, formal teaching is actually frowned on before the age of 7 but this does not appear to disadvantage them in terms of literacy. Quite the contrary. 

I think the debate has probably run its course for me personally since it is reaching that point where it starts to go round in circles. I will follow it with interest but from a distance.

My best wishes