[senco-forum] learning to read

Brendan

For fundamentalists, the imposition of SP on all schools would not be a cause for despair but a cause for rejoicing.  Whether the majority either need or want it is not a factor in their thinking.

Phonics IS the reading code and the phonics rules have to be learned. That is beyond dispute. Those who were never taught phonics but nevertheless became very literate people can only have 'deduced' these rules from the store 'whole words' which everyone automatically and unavoidably assimilates into visual memory without tutoring, much as we automatically and unavoidably remember thousands of other visual images. It is unfortunate that this same deductive process fails about one fifth of the population because this leaves them with a difficulty in learning to read. This difficulty is not impaired deductive reasoning but a difficulty in acquiring a sight vocabulary extensive enough to facilitate good phonemic awareness. The fact that a good phonics course can resolve this dilemma supports this conclusion but SP fundamentalists claim that there is no such thing as sight vocabulary ie. that there is no store of words as discrete visual entities. 'Whole words' for them are 'dirty words.'  . . and they would impose their will on all children. Beware these fundamentalists and remember that all roads to hell are paved with good intentions.

It is the proper business of schools to detect the minority of children who routinely do not make adequate progress in any area of the curriculum and to teach that minority through appropriate teaching. The SP fundamentalist rejects that philosophy. They do actually know that SP is unnecessary for most of the population.  They support the idea of teaching SP to children who don't need it on the basis THAT IT WILL DO THEM NO HARM'  but are sufficiently astute to recognise that even those at the DfES would be unable to swallow such an illogical philosophy of Education.

As a long time supporter of SP from before the Clackmannanshire work became public knowledge, it grieves me to see this highly productive remedial approach devalued in this way.

 Eddie C.