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WE HAVE A PROBLEM

(RELEASED 4-10-07)

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 our nation more than the war on terrorism, crime, and drugs combined. 
 

We must reframe how we think about what is at stake and what is involved in learning to read.  After reviewing the dimensions of the reading crisis we present the dangerous cognitive, linguistic, academic, EMOTIONAL, and social consequences of protracted learning to read difficulties. Next we present some of the consequences of adult low-literacy to our: democracy, economy, health care system, tax burden, and in terms of persistent poverty and consumer behavior. Finally, given the number of lives affected, we make the case that reading improficiency is our nation's most wide-spread learning disability and that nothing short of a complete REFRAME in how we think about it 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

"No one is to blame, we are all responsible"
(RELEASED 5-28-07)

"We're saying that it’s a miracle that it ever happens. It’s very unsurprising that many people struggle with it." - Dr. Michael Merzenich, Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences, University of California at San Francisco

CAUSES AND CONTRIBUTING FACTORS - 13 VIDEO SEGMENTS

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:

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 ~ 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 their learning to read difficulties. 

READ-I-NESS

"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

(RELEASED 11-01-07)

"...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

In this chapter we explore some key factors and issues related to how children's early learning trajectories determine their level of readiness for taking on the challenges involved in 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", Senior Scientist at the Schiefelbusch Institute for Life Span Studies.

SHAME



The Dark Heart of Reading Difficulties
(RELEASED 7-15-07)

"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

Building on 'CHILD'S FAULT' from 'Causes and Contributing Factors', this module's first segment provides a good starting point for appreciating the “SHAME” that struggling readers experience. Next, “The Power of Shame” describes shame's painful life-long and often life-distorting effects. The next three segments explore the “Public Shame” of the classroom; the “Fear of Shame” felt by children as they anticipate being asked to read out loud in classrooms, and how both drive the “Secret Shame” that causes children to hide their reading difficulties from parents, teachers and peers.  “Emotionally Learning Disabling” and “Avoidance” build on the previous segments and show how powerfully behavior-determining and learning-disabling shame avoidance can be. Finally, “Cognitively Learning Disabling” begins our discussion of the ‘downward spiral of shame’ (another future module) and describes how shame disrupts, distracts, and chokes the cognitive processing that is necessary for learning to read in the first place.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CODE - PART 1
"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



"We have all become children of the code"  - Dr. Malcolm Richardson,
Chair, Department of English, LSU
(RELEASED 9-03-07)

"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 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 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" (coming later in the series). 

"I think it was much easier to learn how to read in the 8th 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

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

 ...[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

"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

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.

..."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

SAMPLE/PREVIEWS FROM UPCOMING CHAPTERS
(the previews are provided to convey a glimpse of the scope of the series - the clips available do not reflect
a chapter's most interesting or important segments - not all chapters are listed below)

FROM KING JAMES' PHONICS TO THE
READING WARS

Coming Soon

WHAT IS READING?

Coming Soon

1) Recorded cases

Copyright statement:  Copyright (c) 2008, 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)