Reading Problem Solved!…(Not!)
I’ve noticed that some of my most popular posts are about education. I’m a public school educator, and I’m not blind to the problems that we have in education. (I am quite willing to do my part to solve those problems, however, even if the system is flawed.) Although I teach math, reading is the other big part of the puzzle. Here’s an article I ran across about how one school system is trying to get kids to read.
Click here to read the article.
Let me tell you what I think is right about this plan, then I’ll get to what I think is dead wrong.
What’s right is this: If you have a population of kids who either can’t or aren’t reading, then yeah, let’s give them comics to read. It truly is better than nothing.
Comics are also great for exercising the imagination. Yours truly loves comics! (I’ve also read the complete works of Shakespeare and a great deal of English and French literature.)
My problem, however, is this.
How did things get so bad that these kids are not reading in the first place? I suspect a big part of the issue is that a lot of these non-readers can’t read well enough to read decent literature. Also, perhaps the selection of literature given these kids might not be kid friendly. (I haven’t seen Robert Lewis Stevenson around the classrooms lately.)
Like Shanahan, I think school time should be devoted to academic pursuits. I remember how upset my wife got last year when she found out our school was showing feature length movies to our kids. We can do that at home! (Although we rarely do.)
I’ve got another issue with all of this.
Public school tends to cater to the lowest common denominator.
There’s a buzz word in education called “distributed learning.” The idea is that in a classroom of students of wildly varying levels, the teacher can teach to all levels by dividing up the class into groups according to expertise.
Sounds great in theory. In practice, the lower-level kids get all the attention and the more advanced kids are left out to dry. I actually had a principal from another school system tell me that the top 25% of students can take care of themselves.
One of my main concerns with the comics idea is that if you let kids read them in school, the kids who actually could and should be reading real literature are going to just sit around and read comics. This is like the Kurt Vonnegut story “Harrison Bergeron” where the elite are punished and brought down to the level of the inferior.
To sum up my opinion of this comic book scheme. It might work if used judiciously with the right kids. But it could easily do more damage than good and just contribute to the continuation of The Great Dumbing Down.
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May 7th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Lord EPA didn’t start reading well until third grade (he was still in public school back then). They were participating in the accelerated reader program and were allowed to pick whatever book they wanted. Lord Epa picked books above his grade level. The teacher complained that the vast majority of students were picking books at or below their grade level and thus were not benefiting from the program.
Turns out Lord Epa’s major problem with reading was he didn’t care for the stories they were being forced to read. He is a regular bookworm these days.
May 7th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Alasandra, Thanks for the comment. This happens to a lot of children. The unfortunate part is many of them decide they don’t like reading (or math) based on the fact they’re bored or not challenged.
May 11th, 2007 at 5:37 am
I haven’t found a student yet that couldn’t be fixed with a treatment of pure phonics with no sight words or word families. Nonsense words are required to break whole word guessing habits if they’ve been reading incorrectly too long.
Once they’re reading well, they pick more challenging books than comics. I had a 5th grade student who was so excited that was learning something his older brother didn’t know–he was reading an article in Scientific American about a new discovery.
Dr. Hilda Moss in “The Complete Handbook of Children’s Reading Disorders,” argues persuasively that comic books can contribute to “linear dyslexia” because text does not always line up in a left to right pattern and the pictures contribute to eye movement problems. She also had some interesting stats about comic book reading and dyslexia. Her book is well worth reading, and the portion about comic books convinced me to avoid them altogether if possible, but certainly during the first year or 2 of reading when the skill is still being developed.
May 11th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Elizabeth, Thanks for this great information! It makes total sense when you think about it. The act of reading a comic is quite different from reading an article or a book, in the same sense that online reading is different. Your site, www.thephonicspage.org is great!
May 12th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Lee-
You’re right, I hadn’t thought about it myself, and would have thought that reading anything was better than reading nothing, but Mosse’s book convinced me otherwise. And, it does make sense when you think about it.
Thanks for the kind words about the website. I have a bunch of stuff I want to add, but with 2 little ones and a move coming up, I don’t think I’ll be adding anything for a few months. We’re currently near the Library of Congress, and I’ve found a lot of interesting information there recently about reading and spelling.