Tuesday 12 July 2011

Alan Thomas and How Children Learn at Home

Many home educators are very sensitive about any criticism of the ideologues whose writings underpin their chosen lifestyle and educational methods. I mentioned a few days ago that AS Neill was brought up in Scotland and believed that children should be free to have a sex life; I was promptly accused by one person commenting here of ‘slandering’ him! Many of the more outlandish beliefs and practices of British home educators are justified by them on the grounds of supposed research. Often, claims are made about the academic attainments of home educated children or the acceptability of not teaching them to read formally. These claims are usually supported by reference to the work of Paula Rothermel and Alan Thomas. I have dealt with Rothermel’s research in the past. Time now to look in a little detail at that of Alan Thomas.

A popular belief among those who think that children are able to acquire literacy informally is that although they may be later than school children in learning to read, it does not matter because they will soon catch up when they do start. The only research which supports this contention is that of Alan Thomas. Let us look at what he said. The chapter on reading in the book which he co-authored with Harriet Pattison contains the clearest account of his work in this field (How Children Learn at Home, Thomas and Pattison, Continuum 2007).

The chapter in question, chapter 8 of the book, begins unexceptionally enough by suggesting that there are various ways of teaching reading and that no single method has been found to be the best in all cases. The authors then go on to say that home educating parents are very flexible at moving from one method to another as seems best. This is a little misleading and obviously put in to lull any professionals reading the book into a state of quiescence. The thrust of the rest of the chapter is not that various methods are successful, but that success may be achieved by using no method at all and just relying upon the child to teach herself. On page 94, Thomas and Pattison claim that ’Resistance to being taught and late reading both featured in earlier research’. They mean of course Thomas own research in 1998. Talking of parents teaching their children to read, Thomas and Pattison say:

’the outcome of parents’ best efforts in this direction was rarely successful. Children frequently resisted any form of structured teaching..

They go on to describe how parents gave up on the whole thing. This is very strange. For almost the whole of recorded history, children have been taught to read by their parents. In early 19th Century America, a time when there were few schools, the practice was universal. It was said by a contemporary observer that a child unable to read was, ’as rare as the appearance of a comet’. Many home educating parents today teach their children to read, as do many other parents. I was taught to read by my own parents before starting school. The idea that children commonly resist the teaching of reading is not borne out either by history, any research or common experience. Perhaps the fact that Thomas’ sample here, the twenty six families about whom he is writing in this book, were handpicked and dedicated autonomous educators has some bearing on the matter? At any rate, there is something clearly odd and atypical about these parents if their children are proving so resistant to being taught to read.

After acknowledging that not teaching children to read means that they are likely not to read until later than those who have been taught, which is perhaps not entirely surprising, Thomas says this:

Not only does late reading at home appear to hold no knock on educational disadvantage but it also seems to have no long-term consequences for reading ability’

It is this assertion which has been eagerly seized upon by parents who refuse to teach their children to read. It is of course absolute nonsense. Thomas does not define what he means by ’educational disadvantage’. Nor does he explain how it might be measured, nor by whom the decision was made that it was not present in any of these children. How on earth does he know that there was no ’educational disadvantage’? We are not told; it is sheer waffle. Similarly, his remark about long-term reading ability. Where are his data for making this claim? Were the kids tested? Did he rely upon the parents’ information? Again, we are not told. This much quoted statement may accordingly be ignored.

On page 100 he tries to revive the tired old notion of reading readiness, citing a number of factors which must supposedly be present before a child can learn to read. It is a daunting list, including recognising and being able to name letters, being able to distinguish different sounds in speech and many other things. The implication is that some children will not acquire all this supposedly vital knowledge until a later age. Again, this is nonsense. A child of eighteen months does not need to know the letters of the alphabet, let alone be able to name them, in order to see the word ’cat’ and read it. We do not spell out words letter by letter in that way. One only has to look at Chinese ideograms to see that it is possible to learn to read without synthetic phonics!

The problem with Alan Thomas’ work is that it has been seized upon and his ideas followed slavishly by people who do not really understand what they are doing. This is dangerous, although to be fair to Thomas, it is not really his fault. There are many excellent books available on the subject of learning to read; How Children learn at Home is not one of them.

23 comments:

  1. 1. As I've pointed out before, whether or not a child can read depends on what you mean by reading. A child unable to read at all in early 19th century America might have been as as rare as the appearance of a comet (although you don't cite your source - it would have been extremely challenging to gather such data at the time) but that doesn't mean all American children were fluent readers. Indeed, a common theme running through 19th century American children's literature was adults discouraging children from reading - it was frequently considered bad for their eyesight and a distraction from chores that were often vital to the family's survival and wellbeing.

    2. Around 20% of children in schools could be described as 'resistant to reading' so I don't see why Thomas' figures are questionable.

    3. Your comments on phonics are debatable. I agree that children learn to read by whole-word recognition, using the same mechanism as is used to read ideograms. However, since English uses an alphabetic system, it's impossible to learn all words by whole-word recognition. Novel words or lengthy words have to be decoded using phonic methods. The evidence suggests that experienced readers use a combination of techniques. It also suggests that children who learn to read using synthetic phonics do so more efficiently than children who don't.

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  2. IME, phonics does not make sense to all children. My earlier-reading child (from 2-3yo) still cannot make any real use of phonic information but reads voraciously and at a high level. My later-reading child (about 7-8yo) could spell several years before, so was certainly using phonics. That child is much less likely to be reading a book now although can do so at a perfectly acceptable adult level.

    I don't see a great correlation between using phonics and adult reading level. I do see a link between a child refusing to (admit they can) read and an adult pushing it in a way that the child perceived as a threatening test.

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  3. "The problem with Alan Thomas’ work is that it has been seized upon and his ideas followed slavishly by people who do not really understand what they are doing."
    Evidence for this?

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  4. '2. Around 20% of children in schools could be described as 'resistant to reading' so I don't see why Thomas' figures are questionable.'

    Thomas gives no figures. He says,

    ’the outcome of parents’ best efforts in this direction was rarely successful. Children frequently resisted any form of structured teaching..'

    This suggsts that resistance to learning to read is the rule, rather than the exception. In fact, as we both know, 80% of children manage fine and those having difficulties are the exception. Thomas is either deliberatley misleading readers or he is working with a very atypical group.
    Simon.

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  5. 'Evidence for this?'

    The number of home edcuating parents who say that it does not matter if a child is late reading, because research shows that they will soon catch up and that there is no long-term effect in starting to read at twelve, rather than six.

    Simon.

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  6. 'an adult pushing it in a way that the child perceived as a threatening test.'

    Acquiring literacy should be an enjoyable game; not a menacing chore!

    Simon.

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  7. @Shena

    Neither of my children used synthetic phonics to learn to read - my son (at 5-6 at school) *couldn't* use it as a method because he couldn't discriminate between certain speech sounds and because he had trouble blending more than three letters.

    However, we are using it successfully (at 12 at home) to support his spelling because now he can explain which sounds he has trouble discriminating between, understands the rationale behind SP, and is able to use it as a strategy to help him.

    The research is quite clear that expert readers use a range of strategies to decode words - it's highly unlikely that anyone would use only phonics or only whole-word recognition, because the brain doesn't normally work like that.

    The research is also quite clear that *in general* children who learn to read using synthetic phonics do so more efficiently than children who learn using analytic phonics or look-and-say.

    I completely agree about the issue of reading being pushed on a reluctant child.

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  8. I tried to "teach" my daughter to read using phonics and she resisted it. She was fine with spelling the letters out C-A-T etc but couldn't (or wouldn't) blend them to make CAT. So I left it for a bit and we carried on with what we'd always done which was just reading to her and letting her see what we were reading. In this way she "taught" herself to read. It's also the way I learnt to read, no one ever needed to teach me. Of course it depends how you define the word teach, to my mind we didn't teach her anything because it required no effort on my part, in the same way that we didn't teach her to walk or talk she just learnt it. At 7 years old she read her first book, Harry Potter and now at 9 has a reading age of 13+. Late reading certainly hasn't held her back. I was always sceptical of stories like this until I saw it with my own eyes.

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  9. Simon wrote... ‘Not only does late reading at home appear to hold no knock on educational disadvantage but it also seems to have no long-term consequences for reading ability’.....It is of course absolute nonsense.

    We dont know it's nonsense, the fact is that we simply don't know full stop. There are no real numbers or research in this field, so no-one can really presume to know anything other that from their own experience and this is anecdotal evidence and isnt accurate enough to be used scientifically .

    However I think that reading is taught/learnt through seeing, doing and practicing these skills. Even if a parent doesn't actively 'teach' a child they probably have alphabet games and toys, and posters maybe. They read to their children and 'model' reading to their children. They probably write letters and words together, spell out 'cat' as they play together... it all mounts to exposure which is a good early key to learning to read.
    There are many flaws with the synthetic phonics/phonic approach to reading and I have heard tales of many children who are completely baffled and confused by sounds in words.

    None of my children learnt to read using a phonics approach but we did incorperate it once reading had begun(Usually in 1st grade when we started to use US phonic workbooks to help with spelling)which has been far more successful. I have to add though all except one of my children learnt to read properly at around 7/8yrs old.

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  10. Simon wrote,
    "Thomas gives no figures. He says,

    ’the outcome of parents’ best efforts in this direction was rarely successful. Children frequently resisted any form of structured teaching..'"

    In his earlier research involving 100 families and 210 children he gives a figure of 1 in 5 for late reading (see Educating Children at Home, 1998).

    "The number of home edcuating parents who say that it does not matter if a child is late reading, because research shows that they will soon catch up and that there is no long-term effect in starting to read at twelve, rather than six."

    What about the number who say that this was their experience with their own children? Obviously this is anecdotal and there's no way to know what their reading would have been like if they had learnt at a different age, it could have been better or worse, but our late readers (13/14ish) read as well as the early readers (2/3ish). They took reading age tests for their own interest because they were interested in the differences between themselves. They are all gaining top marks on their current academic courses.

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  11. "Of course it depends how you define the word teach, to my mind we didn't teach her anything because it required no effort on my part, in the same way that we didn't teach her to walk or talk she just learnt it."

    I think this is central to the debate about teaching or not teaching. Many autonomous educators claim that they did not teach their child to read. However, I suspect they did what we (and it sounds like you) did and read to their child, provided lots of books, played word games, modelled reading behaviour, drew letters in sand for fun, answered the child's questions about words or spellings, spotted letters from their name when out on walks, watched educational children's TV together (Sesame Street, for example) etc. It doesn't feel like teaching as you say, because it's much the same as holding a babies hands as they take their first steps. We don't call this teaching either. But when schools attempt to duplicate the home life I've described they call it teaching. I think Simon would also call it teaching.

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  12. 'Not only does late reading at home appear to hold no knock on educational disadvantage but it also seems to have no long-term consequences for reading ability’.....It is of course absolute nonsense'

    'We dont know it's nonsense, the fact is that we simply don't know full stop.'

    It is nonsense to make such a claim without defining what one means by 'educational disadvantage and explaining how it is being measured.

    Simon.

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  13. 'In his earlier research involving 100 families and 210 children he gives a figure of 1 in 5 for late reading '

    Which ties in with what we know happens in schools. this post is specifically about the line which Thomas adopts in How Children Learn at Home.

    Simon.

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  14. 'What about the number who say that this was their experience with their own children?'

    All of which is fair enough. What i am talking about is people using Thomas' work to support the non-teaching of reading and claiming that his research supports their own view of the matter.

    Simon.

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  15. Simon wrote...
    'We dont know it's nonsense, the fact is that we simply don't know full stop.'

    It is nonsense to make such a claim without defining what one means by 'educational disadvantage and explaining how it is being measured.

    Yes, this is a big problem. Without a clear measure we cant hope to decide how true or untrue his claims are.
    Does he talk about 'educational disadvantages' anywhere else in the book which might indicate what he is implying?

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  16. "All of which is fair enough. What i am talking about is people using Thomas' work to support the non-teaching of reading and claiming that his research supports their own view of the matter."

    But is his definition of non-teaching of reading the same as yours? For you, non-teaching appears to mean a vacuum; no books, no word games, no reading to the child, etc, etc. I suspect that non-teaching to Thomas means not sitting down together for a structured 'reading lesson' whether the child wants to or not such as might happen at school. If this is the case, then I have no difficulty in believing that his earlier research (that he appears to reference when making that statement) supports his statement. Have you read the earlier research to check?

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  17. ' For you, non-teaching appears to mean a vacuum; no books, no word games, no reading to the child, etc, etc.'

    Nothing of the sort; this was the main sort of teaching which I used when my child was little. I hope you don't suppose that life in Chateau Webb, when my daughter was a baby, consisted of my propping her in front of a blackboard and teaching her the alphabet by rote?

    Simon.

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  18. "Nothing of the sort; this was the main sort of teaching which I used when my child was little."

    Exactly. You call this teaching. I'm suggesting that other people may not call this teaching even though they do the same in practice. The text you quote was my impression of what you think an autonomous educator means when they say they didn't teach their child to read. They may not see it as teaching because it's just normal behaviour. When we hold a babies hands when they are learning to walk we don't say then that we are teaching them to walk. Likewise, a parent doing all the activities described may not view that as teaching.

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  19. Thank you, Jane. That is precisely what I mean. I did not "teach" because I simply did normal (for us) activities and my DC started to read independently, as they started to walk, talk, use a knife and fork, etc. As an autonomous educator, my focus is on learning, not on teaching. From Simon's descriptions (here and elsewhere), we did very similar things. AFAICS, the difference was in our intentions.

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  20. Shena wrote,
    "From Simon's descriptions (here and elsewhere), we did very similar things. AFAICS, the difference was in our intentions."

    Yes, the impetus comes from the child rather the adult. Although teaching literally means to impart knowledge or instruction, something I think all autonomous educators do, the word tends also to associate with the teacher defining and controlling the curriculum. I think this may be why autonomous educators shy away from this word as a description of what they do even though, as you say, it would look much like Simon's style of education to an outside observer.

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  21. "What i am talking about is people using Thomas' work to support the non-teaching of reading and claiming that his research supports their own view of the matter."

    If they based their assertions purely on one piece of work, then I might agree with you. However, they also have input from people who have already seen this in action with their own children both on-line and at local groups where they get the chance to meet the children, they have their own observations of how their children learn as well as other research by Thomas, research into external and intrinsic motivation, and information about the age children learn to read in other countries. I'm sure I've missed other sources of information. I think you underestimate people and the amount of information they consider when making choices for their families.

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  22. Harriet Pattison does seem a little confused about autonomous education when she says:

    Sometimes this kind of informal home education is called autonoumous learning, unschooling or natural learning.

    http://www.howchildrenlearnathome.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=50

    Not seeming to realise that autonomous education can easily incorporate structured as well as informal learning.

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  23. Lord Lucas asked a question about HE and reading back in the middle of the Badman stuff,

    There are some wonderful posts on there on how reading can develop in different ways.
    http://lordlucas.blogspot.com/2009/10/reading-begins-at-6-what-have-home.html

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