Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do about It: A Scientific Revolution in Reading

Kousuke had never been to my classroom before, so we were both a little nervous as he faced me across the table. As his mother watched from the couch behind him, he answered questions about an animal scene I had placed between us, and I began to get a sense of his ability with English. For a lower elementary grade student, his responses were remarkable- alert, expressive, and confident. I reached into his bag and pulled out one of the books he had brought to show me, opened it to a random page, and asked him to read it for me. Without hesitation, he read through two paragraphs of the Frog and Toad story, as his mother beamed from the couch. It was astounding, especially for a child who hadn't yet stepped foot outside of Japan. But something bothered me. He was going through the story almost too fast, as if he was reciting a familiar tale, and he wasn't giving himself time to look closely at at the words printed on the page. It was obvious that he knew the story, but it wasn't clear if he knew what he was looking at. Stepping to the large white board next to the table, I wrote the letters t-o-b, and asked him how he would read what I had written. Instantly, he announced `dot'. Okay, I responded, trying not to convey any disapproval or praise in my voice, and wrote d-o-s. `That's dog' he almost shouted, perhaps a little impatient with such simple words. After I wrote s-o-d, he suddenly hesitated, gazed curiously at those three letters, and then said simply; `I don't know'. I was stunned. In ten more minutes, I was certain of five things: Kousuke was a motivated student with a strong interest in English. He could memorize whole words, sentences, and even stories. He could not read. Neither could he write. And that told me that his previous teacher hadn't read Diane McGuiness's book Why Our Children Can't Read. When McGuinness examines the development of print going back 5,000 years, and contrasts the types of writing systems with their companion languages, some essential principles become clear: Written text is a code of the spoken language. The way a language is spoken determines the type of coding system that develops for that language. English, with its abundant vowel sounds, consonant clusters, and over 50,000 possible syllables, is written in an alphabetic code, simply because there is no other reasonable way to go about the task. Throughout the book, McGuinness remains focused on understanding this alphabetic code, and simply follows the logical conclusions, like a scientist pursuing a trail of discoveries. Her writing style is consistently clear, logical, and humorous, deepened by the insightful perceptions of the child psychologist, researcher, classroom teacher, and parent that she is. Her analysis takes us to a position that not only is easy to grasp, but stands apart from the battlegrounds of the the phonics-vrs-whole language reading wars of recent decades. If English text is an alphabetic code for English speech soun

This book is well worth reading. It gives an accurate insight of why our children carn't read. The phonological difficulties associated with reading and spelling problems can be remediated using sound-to-letter mapping, such as that described in the book. The Allographs programme, written by Dianne McGuinness and mentioned in her book, is an excellent resource to use to teach children to read and spell by sound-to-letter mapping and has been recently researched. Secondary school students increased 12-24 months in twleve, one hour lessons. It works, it's worth a try.

An excellent book, founded in common sense, close observation, and real science. I hope it starts a revolution, and soon. Rita Kramer complains about the occasional tone of the book that the author's "own method is the only way to teach reading". Don't be put off by that. The book does make (and justify) some very strong claims about what any successful method for learning to read and write has to do.This book is the theory book. The companion "how to" or workbook, for parents doing home-schooling or trying to help their children learn to read, is "Reading Reflex", by Geoffry and Carmen McGuinness.It's no surprise that the book is very critical of whole language, invented spelling, and such. But the real win for me was its critique of (traditional) phonics. Most phonics teaching stinks. It's unsystematic, and riddled with false claims and utterly confused classifications. Phonics is the way to go, but you do have to get it right.Most controversial will be its claim that there is no such thing as dyslexia. If you or a family member are "dyslexic" or "LD", by all means get and read this book.The book argues that dyslexia is not inborn but the result of being intellectually maimed by teaching mistakes. You can verify for yourself that these mistakes are pervasive throughout our school system and you can satisfy yourself that they are indeed mistakes: they are false statements about the writing system of English. One consequence of that is that the smarter the child, the more deeply he or she gets wedged if commanded to believe nonsense.The book also claims that dyslexics can be rescued. It is not a snake-oil miracle cure; the "12 hour" figure is often cited, but this is only for getting a child unstuck and moving again. As the book discusses, adults and emotionally traumatized people take longer to get unstuck, and nobody learns to read from start to finish in 12 hours. What the book is really claiming is that dyslexia is like being lost in a storm with a map that lies. You can struggle all you want but the map will subvert all your best efforts, and you give up. The moment you have a good map, your efforts become effective again.

On the very first page of her book, Diane McGuinness profiled a boy whose reading and writing issues were so much like my daughter's that I knew for once I was reading a book that was going to take my concerns seriously. For the last year, I have been searching high and low for a reading program that makes sense. I thought phonics instruction was preferable to making her memorize words, but when I tried to teach it, I ran into the very issues McGuinness describes in the book - incomplete and confusing rules that just get broken anyway. The method McGuiness recommends (teaching sounds first) is elegant and simple, and would seem to solve the problem my daughter seems to have more than any other - inability to hear the sounds inside the words. I just wish this book had been published a year ago when I started on this agonizing journey. I must disagree with Rita Kramer though, because I don't believe this book is too technical for parents who want the best for their children. How else can we evaluate whether her program makes sense unless she gives us an in-depth analysis? This is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the hows and whys of reading.