Wednesday 5 January 2011

Learning to read independently

Every so often, home educating parents in this country come across a piece of research which seems to confirm that they are doing the right thing in not teaching their kids how to read and write. Many people regard this approach as a form of educational Russian Roulette but, as I say, once in a while something crops up which apparently suggest otherwise. The latest such is a blogpost by a semi-retired professor of psychology at Boston College in the USA. It may be found here;

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read


It is certainly interesting, but repays a little closer attention. It puts me in mind rather of the research from Otago in New Zealand that was being touted on home education Internet lists some time ago as proof positive that the teaching of reading is unnecessary. Just as with that case, there is a little more to this than meets the eye.

To begin with, the conclusions which Peter Grey draws in this piece, radically different it must be said from almost every other educationalist in the western world, is that reading may simply be picked up in much the same way that oral language is acquired. So far, so good. It is not exactly an original thesis, but one followed as dogma by many home educators. He bases this belief upon work carried out by a couple of students at one school involving sixteen children. This is such an incredibly small sample, that already one cannot help but be a little dubious about being able to extrapolate from those sixteen children to a general principle in the teaching, or not, of reading. There is more though. These children were all pupils at Sudbury Valley School, a kind of American Summerhill. Grey forgets to mention in the article that he has been a trustee of this school since 1984; he sent his own son there. This at once tends to indicate a certain lack of objectivity about the methods being used at Sudbury Valley. It is a private, fee paying school, which at once means that only a certain type of family will be sending their child there. We know that a professor of psychology sent his son to the school; are there many other children of academics there? Are the children there from prosperous homes where there are many books? What is the ethnic background? Many questions of this sort occur to one immediately. How fair a sample is this? Sixteen children from one private school.

True, Grey then goes on to bolster his argument by citing another eighteen cases. Unfortunately, these are all anonymous people who commented on his blog! Come on guys, I am sure that we can all see the nature of the problem with that approach. Looking at this blog, we have some people commenting who are frankly barking mad. Would I be prepared to base a new theory of education upon the testimony of some of the types who come on here and comment? Probably not.

It would be interesting in the extreme to see a large-scale piece of research conducted into this business. Nobody doubts for a moment that some children acquire literacy informally; the question to ask is how frequent this is and what the common factors are in the lives of such children. Parents are notoriously unreliable witnesses when it comes to describing their children's attainments and most of us cannot remember clearly the process whereby we ourselves learned to read. There is, it seems to me, scope here for a properly conducted piece of work among home educating parents. We have of course see one or two attempts in this country at such a thing, most notably Paula Rothermel's twelve years ago. Unfortunately, she only carried out five tests of reading ability herself, an even smaller sample than that at Sudbury Valley. For the time being, we must enter a verdict of 'Not proven' on this question and hope for some work to be carried out in the future.

16 comments:

  1. I suspect that if you look into it, the children were not left to their own devices, but were provided with support when the child wanted it. We always helped out if asked about a word, and occasionally corrected pronunciation, but it was always reactive to my son's needs rather than proactive trying to push him along (having discovered very early on that such an approach was not going to work).

    To me, that is the difference - school is forcing things along according to a timetable and milestones, whereas if given time, children will find their own path to reading, calling on resources as needed.

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  2. The Gray article doesn't say anything, as far as I can see, that hasn't been said many times over many years in the 'reading wars' literature he refers to. I suppose the only novel aspect is that his data came from children who have recently taught themselves to read, rather than relying on accounts of children doing so prior to the advent of state education.

    My biggest problem with what he says is that he appears to treat 'reading' as a single, unitary entity, rather than a complex skill involving several sub-skills (e.g. auditory, visual, attentional) and also being multi-faceted (e.g. social, motivational, utilitarian).

    We know that children with speech and visual issues often have problems learning to read, and that auditory and visual processing and attention tend to improve as a child develops. Since children's developmental trajectories and interests vary, one would expect the age at which they start to read to vary too.

    I agree with Dave that it's highly unlikely that a child would learn to read if left completely to their own devices. Children in an environment where other people are reading are exposed to a fair bit of information about the relationship between written symbols and speech sounds. Some children can work out the relationship for themselves and learn effortlessly - others need to have it made explicit and need lots of rehearsal. Others really do need to be left until they are 'ready'.

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  3. 'Children in an environment where other people are reading are exposed to a fair bit of information about the relationship between written symbols and speech sounds. '

    Yes, this is why I wondered about the backgrounds of the children in Sudbury Valley.

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  4. 'if given time, children will find their own path to reading, calling on resources as needed.'

    Or not.

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  5. 'Anonymous said...
    'if given time, children will find their own path to reading, calling on resources as needed.'

    Or not.'

    Yes, quite!

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  6. "at such a thing, most notably Paula Rothermel's twelve years ago. Unfortunately, she only carried out five tests of reading ability herself, an even smaller sample than that at Sudbury Valley."

    Far more parental tests were carried out in the Rothermel study. I suppose this is where you point out that the parents cheated, yet amazingly the 5 that Rothermel happened to pick out to re-test the results showed that the parental testing in these cases had been accurate! Are you suggesting that she just got lucky and picked out the only five that had tested accurately?

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  7. "I suspect that if you look into it, the children were not left to their own devices, but were provided with support when the child wanted it."

    I think this is clear in the article and is also mentioned often when autonomous education is discussed.

    As long as kids grow up in a literate society, surrounded by people who read, they will learn to read. They may ask some questions along the way and get a few pointers from others who already know how to read, but they will take the initiative in all of this and orchestrate the entire process themselves. This is individualized learning... Each child knows exactly what his or her own learning style is, knows exactly what he or she is ready for, and will learn to read in his or her own unique way, at his or her unique schedule.

    Students began their first real reading at a remarkably wide range of ages--from as young as age 4 to as old as age 14. Some students learned very quickly, going from apparently complete non-reading to fluent reading in a matter of weeks; others learned much more slowly. A few learned in a conscious manner, systematically working on phonics and asking for help along the way. Others just "picked it up." They realized, one day, that they could read, but they had no idea how they had learned to do so.

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  8. "'if given time, children will find their own path to reading, calling on resources as needed.'

    Or not."

    I've known about 25 children (selected at birth or at least before literacy and followed through to teenage/young adulthood so, none lost to follow up!) who were educated this way and they are all literate and numerate. School manages something like an 80% success rate. Summerhill have had one case where a child has left the school unable to read well enough to be classed as literate.

    You seem to assume that if a child reaches 12 or so and still cannot read or clearly wants to read earlier but has difficulties that it's too late for them to learn and/or the parents would do nothing to help or encourage them to learn. Why would you think this?

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  9. ' Are you suggesting that she just got lucky and picked out the only five that had tested accurately?'

    No, I'm suggesting that only five tests were carried out on reading ability by the researcher herself. All five were upon children who had already been tested using this instrument. Were the tests identical in format to those which the children had already done? This might mean that the first test, conducted by the parents, could in effect have taught them the answers. We know that in some cases the original tests were left laying around the house. Again, this allows siblings to look at them and perhaps discuss them with the child being tested. Finally, how were the five children who were actually tested by Rotermel herselchosen? Until we know the answers to these sorts of questions, the five tests carried out by Paula Rothermel must be treated with caution. Unfortunately, as soon as I drew attention to these problems last November, the full text of the doctorate was pulled from Rothermel's website. If you know about this, perhaps you could share the information with us?

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  10. "Were the tests identical in format to those which the children had already done? This might mean that the first test, conducted by the parents, could in effect have taught them the answers."

    What is the usual approach to this type of double checking in research? It seems very unlikely that the same test would be used usually and, as this was part of her degree course and was being checked by her professors, I doubt this would have been done incorrectly.

    "We know that in some cases the original tests were left laying around the house. Again, this allows siblings to look at them and perhaps discuss them with the child being tested."

    So are you suggesting that Rothermel just happen to pick out the five where this didn't happen?

    "Finally, how were the five children who were actually tested by Rotermel herselchosen? Until we know the answers to these sorts of questions, the five tests carried out by Paula Rothermel must be treated with caution."

    So do you completely discount the checking of her work by her university professors? This would effectively have been better than peer review as they would have been more closely involved throughout the process. Would she have gained her degree if the research had had serious faults?

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  11. Simon said:

    "Nobody doubts for a moment that some children acquire literacy informally; the question to ask is how frequent this is and what the common factors are in the lives of such children."

    The trouble is that it is bound to be very infrequent in a society in which teaching of reading is pushed on children at an increasingly early age. This also means it is very difficult to find children who have had the opportunity to learn to read informally, in order to do the more rigorous research you are looking for.

    However, anecdotal evidence like the article by Peter Gray and the reported experiences of home educators all around the country are valuable because they indicate that the orthodoxy of formal teaching for literacy may well not suit every child, and may not be necessary for many children.

    Unless the whole school system is overhauled, it will be impossible to tell whether autonomous education would be better for everyone, but knowing that it can be good for some people means that parents, who know their own children well, have a wider range of approaches to consider when deciding how to educate them. I don't see what's wrong with that.

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  12. "'Children in an environment where other people are reading are exposed to a fair bit of information about the relationship between written symbols and speech sounds.'

    Yes, this is why I wondered about the backgrounds of the children in Sudbury Valley."

    Nobody is suggesting that a child in a home without books, newspapers, the internet and computers, without reading role models and experiences (through being read to, etc) and easy access to help and support to learn to read when they want and ask for it will learn to read by some kind of osmosis from the air. Of course a suitable environment is essential. How could it not be? Why would you even think the article or autonomous educators would disagree with you?

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  13. The US research published last year looked at thousands of home schooled children and found no difference in outcomes between unschooled and parent-led approaches. Whilst I'm sure there are differences between US and UK HE, it does show that children will learn to read as well as school children and parent-led HE children using a child-led approach. The basic approach can and does work in homes and schools.

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  14. 'Why would you even think the article or autonomous educators would disagree with you?'

    No mention has been made of autonomous education. I would not in any case have expected any disagrement on this.

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  15. 'So do you completely discount the checking of her work by her university professors?'

    I think I had better make a separate post about this in the next few days. It is too long and complicated a topic to respond to in a brief comment.

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  16. "No mention has been made of autonomous education. I would not in any case have expected any disagrement on this."

    How can this not be about autonomous education? Letting children choose when and how they learn to read, the basis of the article, is part of AE and not usually part of parent-led HE. Also, "not teaching their kids" (how to read and write in this example), is usually how you mistakenly describe the AE approach to education.

    Of course autonomously educating parents sometimes teach their children to read and even in the article there are descriptions of children being taught using phonics, for instance. The difference is that the child asked for this help.

    It's obvious, if you read the article, that 'teaching children to read' is shorthand for 'teaching children to read at a time and place set by teachers (or parents) whether the child is ready or not and whether the child wants to learn or not using methods chosen by the teacher, not the child'. 'Children teach themselves to read and this can include the child asking an adult to teach them to read and always includes lots of support and input from the adults around them,' would be a more accurate title but it's not quite as snappy. However, titles generally don't give the whole message, which is why you need to read an article and not just the title.

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