IMAGINE GROWING UP ASHAMED OF YOUR MIND

According to the U.S. Department of Education more than 60% of K-12 school children are reading below the level needed to proficiently process the written materials used in their grade levels - reading below the level necessary for the brain-work of reading to be transparent to the mind-work of learning from what they are reading.  Obviously, reading is the skill that matters most to success in school and children who fall behind in reading are in great academic danger. However, it is not just the lack of reading skills that most endangers these children. It's the mind-shame.

A Social Education Project
VIDEOS  -  INTERVIEWS  -  EVENTS

Most children who struggle with reading experience the struggle as a reflection of something wrong with themselves - something to be ashamed of. Unintentionally but pervasively, parents, schools, and society as a whole contribute to perpetuating this insidious myth. Children don't think that their reading troubles might be due to a normal difference in their genes and brains analogous to being tall or short - they don't think that maybe their parents, siblings, and other care-givers didn't engage them in enough conversation before they started school  - they don't think that perhaps their teachers didn't teach them correctly - they don't think the confusion they experience is a consequence of an archaic and artificially complex 'code' that presents a completely unnatural processing challenge to their brains... no, they blame themselves - they feel ashamed of themselves - ashamed of their minds. Statements like: "I'm dumb", "I'm stupid", "I'm not smart", "I'm not good in school" are all strategies to protect themselves from the shame they feel.

None of us like to engage in activities that cause us to feel ashamed of ourselves.  So what happens to children who feel ashamed of themselves when learning to read?  They are in serious danger. The shame they feel not only motivates them to avoid reading, it also fosters self-disesteem and undermines the cognitive capacities they need to learn to read in the first place. Millions of children are caught in this learning-disabling downward spiral. Not only are they in danger of being improficient readers, which is learning disabling with respect to educational content access, they are also in danger of developing aversions to other learning situations that trigger similar shameful feelings. Such mind-shame is learning disabling and it can have a very powerful effect on how children learn their way into adulthood.

According to the latest National Assessment of Adult Literacy report (NAAL), over 90 million (4 out of 10) U.S. adults  are living lives socially and economically disadvantaged due to poor reading skills. Adults with low levels of literacy are significantly more likely to live in poverty, engage in crime and other forms of social pathology, and to live unhealthy, and even shorter lives.

Considering the number of children and adults affected and the profoundly negative life-consequences, even if we cut the NAEP and NAAL numbers in half, more children are at risk of long-term life-harm from the consequence of reading difficulties than from parental abuse, accidents, and all other childhood diseases and disorders combined.  In addition to each individual's pain, shame, and loss of opportunity, the collective costs to all of us; socially, politically, and economically are staggering. In purely economic terms the price tag is many hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
 

There have been many attempts to promote and improve literacy. Over the last decade a series of neuroscience breakthroughs and educational research findings have led to an entirely new understanding of the challenges involved in learning to read. However, though we still have much to learn, the challenge today has less to do with the science involved and more to do with bridging the social-educational gap and overcoming the resistance that inhibits getting what we do know to the educators and parents who most need to understand it.

While we are grateful for all who have contributed to the emerging science of reading and to increasing social awareness of the importance of literacy, the Children of the Code project approaches the social-educational challenge differently. First of all, we don’t blame anyone. The blame game and the 'reading wars' have retarded our progress. For over a hundred years we’ve argued over ‘progressive vs. conservative’ ideologies; ‘phonics vs. whole (x)’ methodologies, and ‘spelling vs. alphabet’ code reform. Effectively marginalized by such simplifications, tens of thousands of research studies, hundreds of products, and decades of national and state government legislation have barely moved the needle. New methodologies are embraced by those who share their implicit ideologies and superficially rejected by those who don’t. Part of the reason for this is that the proponents of literacy and particular systems of instruction tend to come with 'baggage'. Partisan politics, ideologies, methodologies, institutional funding needs, profit motives, and marketing hyperbole all contribute to obscuring the issues. They also tend to advocate "solutions" to a problem that, for the most part, educators and parents don't sufficiently understand.  Thus, despite decades of literacy campaigns and advances in the science of reading, there is little evidence of any significant improvement. The lives of tens of millions of children and adults are still being seriously-adversely affected by reading improficiency and its insidious collateral consequences.

Our literacy problems are the legacy effects of generations of ignorance, negligence and superficial thinking. More than all the other issues combined it is our collective misunderstanding of ‘the code’ and what is at stake and what is involved in ‘learning to read it’ that perpetuates our reading crisis and, by extension, our education crisis.  We have to stop seeing struggling readers only through the lens of theoretical and statistical models created by adult readers who no longer have a 1st-person experience of the struggle of learning to read.  We need to completely reframe our thinking about reading.

Our mission is to call attention to and provide resources for such a reframe. We don't endorse any particular expert, methodology, or product and we aren't trying to sell anything. We aren't trying to persuade anyone about anything except the necessity of deepening their learning. We don't look at reading difficulties through the lens of how to improve the 'teaching' of reading, instead through the lens of 'understanding the challenges involved in learning to read' -  from the learner's perspective. In fact, our primary allegiance isn't even to reading improvement per se, our work on reading is part of a larger mission we call  'Stewarding the HEALTH of Our Children's Learning'.

Our premise is this: regardless of particular methods of instruction, the better educators and parents understand the challenges involved in learning to read the better they can help children through those challenges. Thus, the mission of the Children of the Code Project is to help educators, parents, and all who care for children develop a deeper first-person understanding of the challenges involved in learning to read.

So far, we have interviewed over 120 leaders in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics, orthography, instructional design, child, adult, and family literacy, teaching, government policy, and many other fields related to understanding the code and the challenges involved in learning to read it. We have also interviewed more than 40 struggling readers ranging from 4 to 30 years of age. 
 

The Children of the Code project has five major components:

1. A Television, DVD and Web documentary series;

2. A college, university, and professional development DVD series;

3. A cross-indexed website/database containing videos and transcripts of our interviews with the world's leading experts in fields related to reading;

4. A variety of professional development events for educators;

5. A series of presentations for parents, policy makers, and the general public.

Though we are producing a documentary series our purpose is not an end product. We are in this for the long haul - we are in this to help change things. Towards that goal we want to share what we are creating as we are creating it. Today, six chapters of the documentary, including over 70 video segments edited from over 400 hours of interviews are available for viewing online.  Almost 50 of our most significant interviews have been transcribed and cross linked for downloading or reading online. In the coming months we will be adding our most important chapters ("What is Reading?", "The Brain's Challenge" and "Changing Trajectories") so be sure to check back frequently or sign up for our updates.
 

In case you didn't notice: the text on this page is loaded with links to videos, interview transcripts, and data spread throughout our site and other sources on the web. From the beginning, following the links on this page will guide you on a tour through the heart of our work so far.

All of our online resources are free.  Public schools and non-profit organizations can freely embed our content in their own courses and websites. Thanks for reading. Please share our work with everyone you know. Help us. A mind is terrible thing to be ashamed of. 

Comments about our project from Leaders in Literacy and Learning, Event Attendees and Organizers, and Website Visitors

Copyright statement:  Copyright (c) 2009, the Children of the Code Project, Learning Stewards, and Implicity, All Rights Reserved. Permission to use, copy, and distribute these materials for not-for-profit educational purposes, without fee and without a signed licensing agreement, is hereby granted, provided that "Children of the Code - www.childrenofthecode.org"  (with a functioning hyperlink when online) be cited as the source and appear in all excerpts, copies, and distributions.  Thank you. (back to top)