Progress by Looking to the Past : Task force urges a return to phonics in addressing schools’ reading crisis

Reading is the fundamental skill needed for a productive, intellectually rewarding, culturally stimulating life, and the plain, ugly truth is that too many of California’s schoolchildren are sadly deficient in that skill. Reading test results place the state humiliatingly close to the bottom in national rankings.

Urgent attention is demanded to what a state task force is calling “a crisis.” What’s being proposed is not something new but something old, a return to teaching reading by emphasizing phonics and spelling. And that means parents must read daily to preschoolers.

The 27-member task force, appointed last spring by Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, recommends major reforms in teacher training, teaching methods and textbooks with the aim of having all children reading independently by the end of the third grade.

The task force, composed of university professors, administrators, teachers, parents and representatives of business, has good words to say about the strong focus on literature in the current “whole language” approach to developing reading skills. But the task force believes that most children learn best if they are taught using phonics and letter patterns.

The task force recommends giving prompt attention to students who lag in developing reading skills. It also calls for improving school libraries--often woefully neglected in this era of tight budgets--and having more and better books in the classroom.

The key point is that the ability to read with fluency and comprehension is absolutely central to education and to success in almost every occupation.

There was a time in the development of human societies when literacy was the prized monopoly of a relative few, a jealously guarded means of power and control. Today most societies aspire to universal literacy. The schools have no higher task than providing that skill. It’s clearly time to get back to basics in teaching reading.