WHAT'S AT STAKE: More American children suffer long-term life-harm as a consequence of reading difficulties than from parental abuse(1), accidents, and all other childhood diseases and disorders combined.  In purely economic terms, reading related difficulties cost more than the war on terrorism, crime, and drugs combined. 
 

WE HAVE A PROBLEM!   13 VIDEO SEGMENTS

We need to reframe our society's thinking about what's at stake and what's involved in learning to read. 

In the U.S. alone approximately one hundred million children and adults have difficulty reading.  The cognitive, linguistic, academic, EMOTIONAL, social, and physical health consequences of their reading difficulties significantly diminish their opportunities in school, work, and life.  In the aggregate, reading difficulties skew our democracy, drag our economy, perpetuate poverty, and cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Reading improficiency is our nation's most wide-spread and costly learning disability and nothing short of a complete REFRAME in how our society thinks about 'what's at stake' and 'what's involved' is going to improve the situation. 

"Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read.  It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.”  -  John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize Winning Author

CAUSES & CONTRIBUTING FACTORS - 13 Segments

1.  Innate 2.  Parents 3.  Preschools 4.  Exposure 5.  Non-English 6.  Other Media 7.  Reading to Learn 8.  Shallow Thinking 9.  Teacher Training 10.  Resistance 11.  Dysteachia 12.  CONFUSION 13.  Fault

CAUSES & CONTRIBUTING FACTORS  13 VIDEO SEGMENTS "No one is to blame, we are all responsible"

Why is learning to read so difficult?  The root cause of reading difficulties (in most children) can be understood in terms of the complex interplay between:

• a) UNNATURAL CONFUSION (the code)

• b) the child's developmental READINESS to learn through the confusion

• c) how well INSTRUCTION differentially adapts to a child's level of readiness

• d) the child's EMOTIONAL RESPONSE to all the above.

Many other factors contribute to and exacerbate these root issues:  Innate learning differences and disabilities, parental education and involvement, preschools and print exposure all contribute to a child's readiness or lack thereof. Limited English proficiency, the proliferation of media (TV, Video Games...), incompetent instruction, inadequate teacher training, the 3rd-to-4th grade switch to 'reading to learn", our education system's resistance to change, and our society's shallow thinking about reading all exacerbate the confusion. Making all of the above more difficult, educators, parents, and society as a whole, conspire (unintentionally but insidiously-pervasively) to cause children to feel like they are at fault for the difficulties they experience. 

"So the sobering message here is that if children don't have the right experiences during these sensitive periods for the development of a variety of skills, including many cognitive and language capacities, that's a burden that those kids are going to carry; the sensitive period is over, and it's going to be harder for them." - Dr. Jack Shonkoff, Chair, National Scientific Council on the Developing Child

READINESS - 7 Segments

1.  Readiness 2.  Nature & Nurture 3.  Sensitive Slopes 4.  Emotion & Cognition 5.  In The Beginning 6.  Language Foundations 7.  Meaningful Differences

"...children who have trouble with oral language generally will go on to have difficulty with written language..." - Dr. Paula Tallal, Co-Director, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers
 

READINESS: Early Learning Trajectories   7 VIDEO SEGMENTS

Children's early life learning trajectories determine their level of readiness for the challenges involved in learning to read. Understanding these trajectories involves understanding:

• the interplay of nature and nurture

• the sensitive periods of development children's brains progress through

• the inseparability of emotion and cognition in all learning

• the critical role of the family learning environment

• the fundamental role of language  - 'in the beginning is the word'

• how children's language foundations developmentally adapt to their environments

• how children's trajectories through all the above result in meaningful differences that profoundly affect the difficulty they have learning to read

"...Children of professional parents -- I mean, talkative families and college educated -- heard forty-eight million words addressed to them by the time they're four. Children in welfare families who were taciturn heard thirteen million words addressed to them by the time they were four."  - Dr. Todd Risley, co-author "Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children"

"I always tell people that from the moment a kid gets up in the morning until he goes to sleep at night, the central mission of the day is to avoid humiliation at all costs." -  Dr. Mel Levine, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Medical School and co-founder of All Kinds of Minds
 

SHAME: The Dark Heart of Reading Difficulties 8 VIDEO SEGMENTS

"The big step between civilization and more primitive forms of human society is written language."  Dr. John Searle, Professor of the Philosophy of  Mind and Language at U.C. Berkeley

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CODE - PART 1 - 6 Segments

1.  Power of Writing 2.  Alphabet's Big Bang 3.  Grecian Formulas 4.  Lend Me Your Ears 5.  Code of da Vinci 6.  Spread, Rise, & Fall

"We have all become children of the code"  - Dr. Malcolm Richardson, Chair, Department of English, LSU
 

"Once we start writing, we are able to then reflect back upon what we have written, and we enter into this kind of recursive relation to our own written signs. And, so, only then, a certain degree or experience of self-reflection that we now sort of take for granted, comes into being." – David Abram, Philosopher and Ecologist, Author: The Spell of the Sensuous.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CODE  PART 1 6 VIDEO SEGMENTS

Understanding the code and its history is essential to understanding the "CONFUSION' involved in learning to read it today. The "Power of Writing" begins our journey into the profound cognitive and institutional consequences of becoming code users (writers and readers).  Next, "The Alphabet's Big Bang" and "Grecian Formulas" explore the origin of the Alphabet and it's unparalleled effects on the minds and institutions that gave rise to western civilization (future segments will address oral cultures and pre-alphabetic writing systems).  In "Lend Me Your Ears" we introduce the initial relationships between letters and sounds (critical background for future segments on how the code became so complex).  And, in the "Code of da Vinci" we present the code as both the 'DNA of science' and the 'media that enabled the Renaissance'. Finally, we review the "Spread, Rise, and Fall of Literacy" which sets the stage for "A Brief History of the Code - Part 2:  Ye First Millennium Bug".

"I think it was much easier to learn how to read in the 8^th century B.C. than it is today." - Dr. Frank Moore Cross Professor Emeritus of Ancient Languages, Harvard University

...In Greek, or Latin, for example, once you could view the letters, you could read... there was almost a perfect match... Dr. Guy Deutscher,  Author: The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention

 ...[in English] "we have fifty some sounds and only twenty-six letters. So we have to adopt a whole variety of mechanisms to close the gap." - Dr. Richard Venezky, Author: The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CODE - PART 2: YE FIRST MILLENNIUM BUG - 7 Segments

1.  Latin Roots 2.  French Rules 3.  King's English 4.  Chancery Scribes 5.  Roots of Confusion 6.  Great Vowel Shift 7.  Casting Spells

"We are always compromised in certain areas by having to represent sounds with symbols that weren't designed to suit those sounds." - Dr. Johanna Drucker, Author: The Alphabetic Labyrinth

"it's easy to forget that the system we have learned is a system that is based on a series of accidents that result in layers of complexity" - Dr. Thomas Cable, Co-author: A History of the English Language

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CODE   PART 2 YE FIRST MILLENNIUM BUG 7 Video Segments

Though readiness and readiness differentiated instruction reduce the difficulty, working through the code's confusing letter-sound relationships is what most challenges the brains of most struggling readers. There is a direct and causal relationship between  the confusion in the code and the 'stutters' heard in the voice of a struggling reader. Obviously, understanding this confusion is critical to understanding the challenges involved in learning to read. As importantly, understanding how the code became so confused is critical to reframing the experience of struggling readers. The more we understand the accidents and negligence that led to the confusion in the English code the more it becomes obvious that it is absurdly negligent to blame and shame children for their struggle with it.

• Latin Roots – The clergy begin to write English using the letters/sounds of Latin

• French Rules –  French displaces English as the official language of England

• The King’s English – Henry V resurrects English writing

• The Chancery Scribes – The King's scribes forge the roots of modern English

• The First Millennium Bug – The fall of phoneticism and rise of confusion

• The Great Vowel Shift – Major shifts in pronunciation add further confusion

• Casting Spells - The printing press standardizes the unstable writing system

..."the accident of the printing press, which in England served to freeze spelling in the fifteenth century so you have these bizarre spellings" - Dr. Malcolm Richardson, Chair, Department of English, LSU

FROM KING JAMES' PHONICS TO THE
READING WARS

ATTEMPTS TO REFORM THE CODE

WHAT IS READING?

THE BRAIN'S CHALLENGE

CHANGING TRAJECTORIES