Where did the magic go in literacy?

 

A colleague who is a Science of Reading believer, cliaming the science on reading is done. Recently informed me that Whole Language Advocates believed that children learn to read by osmosis.  Reading is hard he said, there is nothing natural about it. I did not engage in his dogma. Instead I told him my story of grandad and I, and our visits to the library. He thought the story was cute, but didn't make the connection to reading. Reading is anything but simple, it is complex and complicated journey with numerous connected turns. 

It takes a village to make readers, children spend 13% of their lives in school. What about the other 87% of their time?  Still he did not get it.  He read off test score data numbers.  Hey come back to me in 5 years, when those same fixed numbers belong in his camp. These psychometric measures in use for literacy in America, guarantee that the numbers will reflect failure. 

Enough silly dogma talk. 

Let us talk magic. 
 

Osmosis has nothing to do with becoming a Reader

A few years ago... a child on the library floor sitting next to my grandfather.  He was reading the Irish Independent from the International Papers section. I ask "what am I supposed to read?"

His face lights up, his mind starts turning, "wait here" brings back a copy of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes illustrated by Gustave Dore.  Big, old, but something about the leather bonding attracts me to a book I could not yet read, but would try. The beginning of our new grandad/grandson connections.  We took the book out, renewing it continuously over and over again for about a year. Each time we read together it set us off on hours of adventure, reading, laughing, imagining, and of course acting it out.  

We all know there is a magical space between books and people that literacy researchers overlook. They love to study how teachers teach reading, and sadly ~  ignore the magical stuff. 

My grandfather was a WWI vet.  He never even finished high school. In my childish eyes his home library was the biggest and best I'd ever known. He had them all, de Cervantes, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dumas, Dickens, Swift, Wells and all the poets. He could quote from them on demand. My dream back then was to read everything he read.  Now that I'm retired,  I'm gonna catch up to the old man. His memory is forever with me ~ because of books.  I cannot go to sleep at night without reading a page or two; still I find the magic hidden among the pages...

Many Literacy Researchers inform my thinking.  Few understand that it is less about how we learn to read and more about why it is that children should become readers. A story comes to life not from the print, but from the mind reading the story. The imagination gives reason to reading, not the printed word. 

Frank Smith always talks about the invitation, inviting children to join the Literacy Club, "It is infinitely more useful for a child to hear a story told by a person than by a computer. Because the greatest part of the learning experience lies not in the particular words of the story, but in the involvement with the individual reading it".  My Grandad was a master reader, and an expert in creating invitations to read. 

Frank Smith got the magic, and magic is never done through osmosis. "We are learning all the time - about the world and about ourselves. We learn without knowing that we are learning and we learn without effort every moment of the day. We learn what is interesting to us... and we learn from what makes sense to us, because there is nothing to learn from what confuses us except that it is confusing." Frank Smith 

These literacy experts need to revisit Frank Smith.  Spend more time thinking about creative and innovative ways to invite children into the Literacy Club.

Louise Rosenblatt, another seldom-read expert these days.  No she is not on a Podcast.  She is a lifetime study for any researcher interested in literacy.  Rosenblatt always sees the magic, she understands readers bring themselves to the texts.  Then in partnership with the text ~ something magical happens. 

She knows there is no osmosis involved in reading "The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the text." ~ Louise Rosenblatt.

 

I am inspired by voices and books of the past                                                                                                 Dr. Jesse P. Turner                                                                                                                                Professor Emeritus of Literacy                                                                                                         

just another Literacy Club Kid... 

If you're wondering what tune inspires my writing today ~ I Don Quixote from Man of La Mancha 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UUDguFEa5E <