Friday, November 20, 2020

Doris Ferry and the phonics debate

 In 1994 I wrote an article for the Evening Post (R.I.P.) about a remarkable woman named Doris Ferry. Doris, who was then 78, was a retired teacher who lived on the Kapiti Coast. All she wanted to do was devote herself to her large garden, but instead she found herself spending half of each day providing individual tutoring at home to local kids who had fallen behind at school. The reason they were failing, without exception, is that they couldn’t read. Parents came to her in desperation after word got around that Doris was succeeding where schools were failing. By the time I interviewed her, she had brought 1500 kids up to speed with their reading – kids who, in many cases, had fallen hopelessly behind at school, even after completing so-called reading recovery courses. The difference to their lives was dramatic.

I’m sure Doris’s empathetic manner and one-on-one tuition  helped, but there was no doubt in her mind that what counted most was her use of the teaching method known as intensive phonics, whereby children learn to read by recognising letters or combinations of letters and the sounds associated with them. Many readers of this blog will recognise that description, because until the 1960s it was how reading was taught in all New Zealand schools. Then, in one of those sudden theory-driven shifts in direction to which the education system seems fatally susceptible, phonics was supplanted by a method known as whole-language.  Under the whole-language approach, children are taught to recognise words by the context in which they occur.  Critics of the phonics method – and here I’m quoting from my 1994 article – say it takes a mechanical approach and inhibits understanding of words by divorcing them from their context. Advocates of phonics, on the other hand, argue that the whole-language method takes a “near enough is good enough” approach, encouraging children to guess words from their context or the illustrations accompanying them.

The results achieved by Doris, and the gratitude of the parents whose kids’ lives were transformed under her tuition, demonstrated convincingly that the phonics method often succeeded where whole-language failed. At least one academic – Tom Nicholson, now an emeritus professor of education at Massey University, and still an advocate of phonics – endorsed Doris’ approach. But what seemed both incomprehensible and reprehensible when I wrote that story was the education system’s single-minded zealotry in enforcing the whole-language approach. The teaching of phonics, which had previously been mainstream, was now deemed heretical. Official disapproval was so vehement that the parents of Doris’s pupils feared serious repercussions if their kids’ schools found out they were learning from her. Children would crouch down out of sight when their parents delivered them to Doris’s address, or make their way to her house using a neighbour’s gate further down the street. Parents spoke to me only on the strict condition that I didn’t use their names in my story.  I was exaggerating only slightly when I described Doris’s clandestine teaching activity as reminiscent of Resistance operations in Nazi-occupied France.

It had somehow been my impression in recent years that this battle was now history - that the Ministry of Education had relaxed its uncompromising opposition to phonics. But no: according to Morning Report today, some schools are raising large sums of money – hundreds of thousands of dollars in one case – to fund the teaching of phonics because the ministry still refuses to, despite clear evidence the officially approved method, which is apparently now known as “balanced literacy”, isn’t working. RNZ reporter Ruth Hill interviewed several principals whose schools had adopted phonics – sometimes against initial resistance from teachers who had to unlearn the officially approved method – and all were emphatic about the benefits, which one described as “phenomenal”. Another said it was impossible to put a price on what her pupils had gained. All sounded exasperated by the ministry’s refusal to provide funding for alternatives to “balanced literacy”, especially when the ministry throws more than $29 million a year at reading recovery programmes of dubious benefit. (Incidentally, no one from the ministry was available for an interview. Fancy that.)

These schools have learned, at considerable expense, what was obvious to Doris Ferry and the parents of her pupils 30 years ago, yet still the bureaucrats cling doggedly to their failed doctrinaire model.  We can only wonder how many New Zealand children – those not fortunate enough to attend schools that are prepared to buck the system – are being penalised as a result by being denied the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

7 comments:

  1. For once this is actually something I know a little about! Great article Karl. Having had my head in the research lately, to sum up the research and results of the 'reading wars' - phonological awareness, phonics, vocab, fluency and comprehension taught in a systematic way - all the way baby. Times have changed, and 'whole language' has morphed a little, but the use of context as the primary way to decode a word is damaging to lower skilled readers. It teaches them a sub-standard strategy that exacerbates poor reading skills.

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  2. In the 1990s, when it was realised that the New Way of the 80s had failed, Reading Recovery reared its head. As its name implies, it was intended to bring those reading failures or inadequacies up to an acceptable standard - whatever that was. There were successes, it must be said.

    A highly structured approach such as the phonics you mention, also learning spelling, word recognition and analysis, pronunciation rules, and comprehension activity such as SRA Laboratories, became almost equivalent to dirty words.

    Educationists (yuk) may have miscalculated the application of their ideological obsessions - but they were never wrong!

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  3. I am not an expert in these matters by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that these two practices - phonics and 'whole language' - are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

    Thinking back back to my own childhood, I was a voracious reader, and in hindsight, can recognise that I employed both methods in developing my vocabulary.

    Therefore, would it not be feasible to have both methods (and perhaps there are more) available for teaching readers, employing the method (or combinations thereof) which best suits the particular child?

    Or is there a deeper battle of ideologies going here?

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  4. In response to Dan, I think this is what people 'naturally ' do. I'm not an expert but I did teach both of my children to read, my son is dyslexic. Whole word recognition or reading just parts of words are what we all do- that is my understanding. This is the way we can all read at the speeds we do -I'm happy to be corrected. Word/ picture recognition certainly helped my dyslexic son but that's not helpful when there are no pictures are a word has no pictorial ' in our minds' association such as connecting words. I found phonology by far the best method and spelling 'rules'. I think we are fortunate that we have a huge capacity to simply 'remember' a huge number of words. My son is very bright and so I've been informed this helped greatly. I have been told by another dyslexic that it takes him an enormous amount of time to read a book because he physically has to read 'every' word as he does not have the capacity to skim where word shape and association give him the required meaning. It's a fascinating area I think. On that basis I think I will google 'how' the human brain reads the written word- it's sparked my interest on something I've largely taken for granted before!

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  5. I can remember being in Standard 2 in Primary School in the mid 60's and a young teacher trying to teach us how to pronounce the word "European". So many of us struggled and we were made to go up individually to the teacher to say it. I am sure phonetics would have made it a lot easier for many of us.

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  6. Thanks Karl. Ah Doris Ferry yes! And there was someone else doing the same, albeit with less recognition: Graeme Crawshaw (RIP) ran his Arapohue (near Dargaville) Bush Camp as an adventure place for kids for 30 years. But in the mid 1990s Graeme got the phonics 'bug' and switched to 'reading adventure' camps. Our family got involved. Many parents applauded Graeme's efforts.

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  7. Interesting article in "The Australian" today for those that are subscribers: "Catholic schools move away from whole language-based teaching in switch to phonics". Even more interesting is the comments section.

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