Buying the Science of Reading

Reading has long been fertile ground for entrepreneurs. In the 1950s Evelyn Woods became a smash hit with her promise to teach ordinary people to read War and Peace in 18 minutes. Time magazine in 1960 called her students “Woodmen” and wrote that “A woodman can mop up Dr. Zhivago in an hour.”

In 1961 George Spache, a reading professor at the University of Florida, attended a demonstration Woods put on in Texas showcasing two of her prized students. As a scientist Spache asked Woods to prove her claims. He had camera equipment set up in an adjoining room intending to record reader’ eye movements and then test their comprehension.

No fool she, Woods declined.

She went on to become famous as a reading teacher throughout the 1960s and 70s. Three U.S. Presidents—Kennedy, Nixon, and Carter—heaped praise on her, and stars like Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and Burt Lancaster made her a household name. By the mid-1970s Reading Dynamics, her course, was raking in $10.5 million per year.¹

Woods made her millions by convincing her students that when they skimmed a text, following their finger as a guide down the middle of a page, they could rely on peripheral vision to capture the outer portions of print. In fact, skimming and scanning have been studied and taught—as pre-reading techniques to prepare for careful reading. As a teacher I’ve found that students need to slow down, not speed up, especially with challenging texts like Tolstoy.

Reading scientists studying eye movements have demonstrated that readers of English, in fact, move their eyes line by line in sweeps from left to write, not down the center of the page. They don’t skip words. They perceive most letters. The eyes jump rapidly in saccades and stop for milliseconds to fixate on a span of roughly seven letters, jump again, dancing their way to the end of the line and returning for another pass. I find the eye movement studies fascinating myself if not very useful, though some of my colleagues are less intrigued (see Rayner and Pollatsek, 1989, for the full scope of these studies).²

I’m concerned with what I’ve seen advertised regarding the Science of Reading (SoR) lately. Much of the commercial focus of SoR is actually built from science and so is not bogus—phonological awareness and phonics must be carefully and systematically taught—but I do see troubling distortions.

For one thing, entrepreneurial SoR has a focus on quick fixes for early reading instruction and offers “courses” for short durations. Like a gas station you pull in, fill up, and drive away. Teachers need in depth work complete with readings and discussions of key linguistic and psychological concepts to construct a knowledge base supporting the teaching and assessment of phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling. There is much more as well.

Blanket assertions like “every child needs 30 minutes per day of systematic phonics instruction” need careful unpacking and contextualizing. SoR is so much bigger than phonemic awareness and decoding, as significant as they are. The simple view of reading dangerously oversimplifies the challenge of teaching.

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The ads themselves are troubling. Look at this one:

I wonder where the words “shifting to the Science of Reading” came from and what it means. Seems so easy and quick. The implication is that this principal had been doing everything wrong when—voila—the veil was lifted and she learned the truth. The images depict an early elementary classroom with a bulletin board titled “Letterland,” narrowing SoR to letters and sounds. Also implied: Once a principal makes a shift, teachers fall in line. The factory model has a way of positioning teachers as automatons who do what they are told with fidelity.

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Reallygreatreading.com offers a really great deal at just $249 per course with site pricing available. There may be really great value in the content, but the word “align” with SoR implies that somebody outside the classroom, presumably reading scientists, knows the answers while the teachers must straighten up and conform. We align car tires, scope and sequence charts, not teachers. Do these teachers have credentials? Do they have an sense of professional obligation to children with different needs? Can $249 per teacher during a top-down “course” do the trick?

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HMH is clear. If you want to build a foundation for reading success, contact sales. Who says that only half of teacher preparation programs teach SoR? And is SoR applied just to the teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics?Having a bona fide PhD in language and literacy education, am I not a reading scientist?

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The field of reading has a professional organization of teachers and researchers called the International Literacy Association. The ILA publishes long standing peer reviewed journals at the heart of SoR. Yet its stance toward teacher development is so very different from the entrepreneurship stance. On its website its mission is described as follows: “The International Literacy Association (ILA) is a professional organization with a mission of connecting research and practice to continuously improve the quality of literacy instruction across the globe.”

The ILA has standards for literacy teacher leaders. Schools should nurture leadership from within, not contact the sales department for a tune up. Consider the following standard as you evaluate for yourself the nature and purpose behind SoR entrepreneurs:

In an upcoming post I’m planning to discuss hot-off-the-press studies of the emerging strength of PLNs, professional learning networks, a movement bringing local and distant teaching groups together to collaborate, to learn, and to talk with one another within and across schools and grade levels.

PLNs acknowledge that instructional leadership and professional development begin at home. School principals can’t make abrupt shifts without breaking something. Teachers can’t be programmed. As a wise principal explained to me, fidelity is integrity to the school’s values and agreements, making and honoring instructional commitments with and to colleagues. You can’t buy it.

1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/09/21/how-a-mormon-housewife-sold-america-the-big-speed-reading-scam/amp/

2. Rayner, K. and Pollatsek, A. (1989). The psychology of reading. Prentice-Hall, Inc.