For well over a century, I guess, most children in this country have learned to read. One way or another – for pedagogic fashions change.
And because we all learned to read we are also likely to have our own strong views on the matter. If you elect to go down the hard road of politics & get to be made Secretary of State for Education you may choose, if you are so inclined, which method should be used on every 5-year old in every state school in the country.
In my day instructions to parents were clear, but firm: do not start teaching your own children any of the 3R’s, on pain of running the risk of sowing the seeds of potential confusion if the school, when they get there at the start of the first term after their 5th birthday, uses different methods.
I was certainly ‘reading ready’ when I got to school. I saw the adults in the family reading & writing; there was a small library of books in our house – the plays of Oscar Wilde, reference books, engineering texts; at nana’s house there were the family bible, Sunday school prizes, a complete set of Dickens & a collection of Rupert Bear annuals belonging to the uncles. Cigarette cards provided a mini encyclopaedia; everybody read newspapers seven days a week.
I had a small number of books of my own. A great treasure was the very first Noddy book, which I insisted on hearing over & over, until I could recite it off by heart while running my fingers under the words. I knew I wasn’t reading however – somehow I had just learned that spaces marked the gap between each word – but I still remember the feeling of wonder when, one evening – t-h-a-t swam off the page & into my eyes & I somehow knew that that was that
At school we started by learning to recite the alphabet, including rhythmic chanting & song, along with simple phonetics: ‘kuh a te spells cat’
There is something magical about the moment when the penny drops for a child & they suddenly can see how to crack the code; but it is a complicated business, depending on sight, sound, experience & understanding. Some children struggle to learn with one method – but hey presto! Studies show that they progress rapidly with an alternative system, which is becomes the new norm.
And so the wheel turns. In a few years we shall hear that children are confused & turned off reading by the insistence that they confine their first steps to speaking words (including some which have no meaning) in conformity with a restricted set of pronouncing rules in English.
Bright children will probably continue to do well however, able to recognise by the age of 6 that G-H-O-T-I* spells fish
*GH as in cough; O as in women; TI as in nation
