Where Science Ends and Pragmatics Begins

The Science of Reading has enjoyed well over a century of serious, disciplined research to explore, examine, and explain how it is that humans make sense of written words. Lately, however, a group with a difference of opinion about the nature of the Science of Reading has rejected research conducted before 1986, the year Tunmer and Gough published their groundbreaking article outlining the Simple View of Reading.

Dr. Louisa Moats, a proponent of the message coming from this fairly recent group of scientists who have decided to carve out a specific set of assumptions about implications for pedagogy emerging from studies the group considers conclusive, nonetheless reminds us that there is much about reading instruction that is still unknown. Here is a quote from Dr. Moats on this topic excerpted from a YouTube from 2021:

The new science formed a number of new platforms to help them get their message out. The scientists working in the trenches worry that teachers with bad thinking and non-scientific pedagogy will refuse to do what settled science demands. Hanging their hats on Phonics, proponents of this narrow science have become active in trying to steer teachers in the right direction. In the same YouTube, Dr. Moats discusses progress the Science of Reading has made just lately in bringing the right message to teachers.

The host of this YouTube, who is a trainer of teachers in the new rocket science of reading instruction, spoke about the grieving process teachers go through when they finally learn what professors in teacher preparation programs willfully withhold:

Dr. Moats urges teachers who experience this grief to write letters and raise a ruckus to get the right message out:

So there you have it. If you find yourself the victim of a teacher preparation program, if you feel a need to be enlightened about the simple view of reading, YouTube is filling up with videos carrying the right message.