Tuesday 1 June 2010

Should we teach our children to read and write?

For at least three and a half thousand years it has been thought a good idea to teach children to read and write, whether or not they actually wish to do so. A clay tablet dug up at Nippur in Iraq dates from around 1700 BC. It reads, in part, 'My teacher said "Your handwriting is unsatisfactory" He caned me'. This gives us some idea of how ancient this idea is. For the last few decades or so though, the notion has circulated that it is in fact neither necessary nor desirable to teach children these skills in a structured way, particularly if they are reluctant to learn. There is a bit of a problem though with this relatively new approach.

A huge body of research dating back centuries amply demonstrates the advantages of teaching children to read and write. A good deal of these data lead also to the conclusion that the earlier children read, the greater the benefits from an educational viewpoint. This is not the case with the educational advantages of not teaching them these skills. There, we are forced to fall back on either bare assertion, the examination of grotesquely small samples, anecdotal evidence or exceedingly limited research. For instance, meta-studies of tens of thousands of children suggest strongly that there is a distinct advantage for a child in learning to read when he is young. True, some surveys indicate that this is only a short lived advantage and that it makes no difference in the long run at what age the process starts; none however suggest that being taught to read at an early age can be harmful. By contrast, there is no research at all which would lead us to suppose that there is an educational advantage in learning to read late, say at the age of eleven or twelve. It is claimed by some that this does no harm and that children quickly catch up, but nobody has ever shown that learning to read late is actually better than learning young. Nor has any research ever shown that not being taught to read is better for a child than being taught to read.

One or two well respected academics claim that children can learn to read by themselves without being taught and that this is a good thing. Such people however make in general unsubstantiated assertions. Alan Thomas has conducted work in this field. His sample was not tens of thousands of children though; it was twenty six. There is of course ample evidence to support the idea that formal education in schools should be delayed until after the age of five. Raymond and Dorothy Moore examined this idea back in the seventies and wrote the book Better late than early, which argued that formal schooling should not start before the age of twelve. A few years later they wrote Home Grown Kids, in which they decided that schools were unnecessary. In other countries, such as Sweden for example, it is thought better to dealy schooling until later than in this country. Learning to read at school when a child is five is however quite a different thing from being taught to read by a parent at the age of two or three. Research showing that early schooling is undesirable does not mean that a parent teaching a child to read at home at that age is undesirable.

I have a suspicion that most of the home educating parents who decide not to teach their children how to read and write refrain from doing so not because they have examined the evidence and concluded that this is the best strategy. Rather, it seems to me that the majority of them begin from this perspective and then cast around for books and websites which will encourage them in this belief. It could hardly be otherwise. After all, anybody looking into the subject objectively will, as I say, soon discover that teaching children to read has been the rule for thousands of years, and that there is really very little evidence that it is unnecessary. Those parents who choose not to teach reading and writing are, in effect, gambling on an untested and unproven theory. This is fine when we make a decision as adults to place our faith in a crank belief system. if I fall ill and prefer crystal healing to antibiotics, that is my affair. If I opt to use a dubious system of medicine or education upon a child though, the case is altered. Children are not able to give informed consent to becoming guinea pigs in this way.

Where our children are concerned, it is probably best to play safe and follow the most widely accepted beliefs regarding their welfare. This should apply equally to their education and medical treatment. It is curious and perhaps significant that many home educating parents who choose to follow bizarre and unsubstantiated educational doctrines, also follow strange and irrational medical ideas such as homeopathy and the dangers of vaccination. I have an idea that the explanation for this propensity to embrace unconventional and frankly outlandish belief systems would be more readily understood by a psychopathologist than the present writer, whose interests in the matter tend to be purely educational.

21 comments:

  1. A lot of children leave school unable to read or write or add up? 1 in five leave school like this!

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  2. I have no problem with admitting that I am wholly sold on the idea of "teaching" reading etc at a relatively young age. The whole principle of "didache" - teaching has always underpinned my parenting - the idea that there is knowledge to be passed on and tha the best way of doing this is by teaching.

    However, even though I am personally sold on this principle, am I convinced that others who do things differently are "bad parents"? I think that is the real issue - and the difference between us, Simon. Although doing things differently makes me unconfortable, I also know that for many families the outcomes are eventually the same, so for these families their alternative methods work. I can think of several families whose children didn't seem to do a lot at primary age, were late readers etc ...but now they have appeared at 12 ish in our home ed classes and they seem to be doing as well,if not better, than many of their more formally taught peers.

    There is a huge difference between "alternative" mthiods of HE/parenting and "neglectful" methods. Taking a snapshot at one moment in time may lead you to think that you are looking at at family that is in the second category, but they are in fact in the first.
    Doubtless the issue is (and always will be) the lack of large scale research into home ed - so we cannot actually know the relative successfulness of the alternative methods against the school models, but we already know that this aspect is an insoluble problem!

    In the meantime - you need to meet a few more "alternative " families who are successfully home educating! It is for this very reason we (as a group) are getting involved with training our local HE advisors so that they aren't too concerned about what they see if it doesn't fit into the usual school moulds.

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  3. Julie i just heard from HCC Peter writing a letter is uncceptable LOL you could not make it up if you tried! LOL

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  4. I don't say that parents who fail to teach their children are 'bad' parents, Julie. I believe them to be mistaken. Nor do I think them neglectful. I have no doubt at all that some parents who rely upon homeopathic remedies instead of vaccinations, genuinely believe that they are doing the best for their children. Similarly, I have no doubt that many of those who follow Popper's ideas of 'intrinsic' motivation for learning are honestly doing what they see as best for their kids. They are not bad or neglectful. Others though might follow these ideas uncomprehendingly and their children might well be at risk of educational failure as a result. I have met quite a few 'alternative' parents, autonomously educating, Steiner and so on. My chief objection is not that their methods offend my sensibilities, but that they have no evidence for their beliefs. If you were asked why you think it right to teach children, you would be able to point to an enormous body of evidence dating back hundreds of years. There is not a scrap of evidence to back up some of the ideas espoused by these people and it is that which makes me uneasy.

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  5. Oh,. here we go again....No, Peter - we (and it is a group effort -I can hardly educate the LA about alternative methods 'cos I don't use any) are not being paid - and we are doing it because we invited them to come to us. However I think your local group is up to someting similar, but if you don't get involved you won't know.

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  6. Peter- I am pretty sure by now that HCC feel that you are using Peter to express your arguments with HCC rather than his own views. What was he/you complaining about now anyway?

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  7. If Mr Williams is using Peter junior as a sock puppet, then there must surely be some input from his wife Carol. The grammar and syntax in the letters supposedly written by the boy are vastly superior to that which Mr Williams himself displays in his messages.

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  8. As the comments section of this blog is basically little more than an incoherent ranting platform for one person, it seems there is only one relevant question to ask. Is it too late for Peter to learn to read and write?

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  9. no its to late LOL!

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  10. "Where our children are concerned, it is probably best to play safe and follow the most widely accepted beliefs regarding their welfare. "

    I'm surprised you didn't choose to send your child to school if this is your attitude. If everyone took this approach nothing new would be developed and progress would halt.

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  11. Simon against progress we still think the earth is flat because that is how things are? the church and leaders used to say the earth was flat but some brave people challenged this view and proved earth was round!

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  12. Very sharp this afternoon, Anonysue!

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  13. "Very sharp this afternoon, Anonysue! "

    Sorry, it wasn't intended, I was just in a rush to go out and those were my first thoughts on reading the post. But don't you think civilisation would stagnate if we all decided to play it safe and do the same as everyone else? If its any reassurance to you, autonomous education is about the only non-mainstream path we take. We use the NHS and are fully vaccinated! We tried the conventional approach to education but it didn't work for us. Autonomous education does. It was an easy choice to make because we could see that it worked best for our children. I would probably have preferred a more conventional approach as I enjoyed planning and carrying out lessons but my children had other ideas.

    As it happens, two out of three have been taught to read by their own choice - the other seemed to pick it up. The one that picked it up is also the one that tends to read fiction for pleasure, the other two are more interested in non-fiction.

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  14. The problem with children's education and things like reading and writing is that you only get one show at it during that crucial period when the brain is very plastic. If it is muffed at that stage, it is extremely hard to put things right later. Witness the harm caused by some crackpot schemes such as the Initial teaching Alphabet and real Books method of teaching reading. Where a child's education is concerned, I think that there is definitely a case for playing safe and sticking to tried and tested methods. I do not apply this to the world at large, of course. i am glad that people often come up with new ideas!

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  15. I think the issues with teaching children to read are that there is no single method that works well for all children, and that it's easier to teach them when they want to learn rather than when the government or school considers that it is convenient.

    I learned aged 4-5 with the help of my mother, who would sit and go through the school books with me so that I progressed quickly and had fun doing so. I still enjoy reading, although my opinion of English Literature as a subject is somewhat lower than my Englush teachers would have liked.

    Contrast this to my son, who was exposed to phonics in playgroup at age four and didn't get on with the concept at all well. He wasn't ready at five (much as I wanted him to be) and finally decided a year or so later that he wanted to read[*] and now aged eight, can often be found in bed reading. I suspect that the issue, he would have lost the enjoyment to be gained from reading.

    So yes, it is possible to force children to read at an early age, but some will be (and probably are, in schools) damaged by the experience.

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  16. Missed the [*]

    He wanted help reading the text messages on his video games and I started deliberately being 'busy' for a few minutes each time before going to help, so he had a real incentive to learn it for himself.

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  17. "The problem with children's education and things like reading and writing is that you only get one show at it during that crucial period when the brain is very plastic. If it is muffed at that stage, it is extremely hard to put things right later."

    Do you have any evidence that leaving it later than usual causes problems? I know there are critical periods for 'natural' learning but this does not apply to reading and writing (or my children would not be reading now).

    I can see that being taught wrongly when young could cause problems that are difficult to reverse. But that sounds like an argument for leaving it until children are old enough to recognise that there are different ways to learn to read, to try a few and find the method(s) that suit them best. One of mine really benefited from phonics for instance, but another let me know very quickly that it wasn't for them and they learn far more efficiently without it. Maybe a younger child would not have recognised the problem and known there were alternatives? It must be very easy to put a child off reading by making it much harder (for that individual)than necessary to learn to read.

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  18. I suppose it depends how much you think you have to *make* children learn. I saw how much my children learnt in their early years, and it seemed logical to conclude that they would continue to learn if I didn't get in their way. I didn't "teach" them to walk and talk, for example, although I was always available with appropriate help and encouragement when they needed it, and of course I was always there as an example of the advantages of being able to walk and talk. One walked early and talked late, the other did it the other way round. I concluded on the basis of research and observation that if I adopted the same approach with reading and writing, they would learn in the same way. They did. They learnt in different ways, but by the age of 8, both were fluent readers.

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  19. I'm wary as well of interfering with the natural developmental process, which is a finely balanced thing. For example, children who miss out on the crawling stage are more likely to have speech and language delays. My own observation of many young children has led me to think that children who are not taught to read until they demonstrate readiness are often particularly articulate and have exceptionally good memories. I think it's very likely that these children are the "normal" ones, and making children learn to read before they are ready causes developmental delays in other areas.

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  20. I think if we, as parents, merely accept the most-commonly held beliefs, then we would all be a bunch of robots! Besides, WE are the ones to make the best decisions for our children. This is one of the reasons my husband and I decided to homeschool; the school system is taking away our responsibilities as parents, and they are very negligent replacements!

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