If it is so absurd why does it still exist

Babies know the meaning of the spoken word even before they can speak, but it takes 5 years for a child to learn the meaning of the printed word. That is absurd, and the elimination of that absurdity is the next step in the evolution of Education.

The incentive component of this program is not an external reward but an internal self-development incentive. It is the same incentive that encourages people to listen and speak. And it can, just as well, encourage them to read and write. It can be compared to the psychological term, internal locus of control.

A bit of background

The Enabling Support Foundation (501c (3)) exists totally in the Cloud and works with productive social good organizations on the Ground. ESF has created the Peace Flame network using Office 365.

The Office platform allows communication and collaboration using the Office apps, and it is through these apps we expand to new sites. During the past three years we have collected videos of teachers using Early Reading techniques. For the most part they are equivalent to learning the meaning of the spoken word. We make these videos available to new teachers who try it in their own classes. And word of mouth does the rest.

The Problem with Reading: Phonetic Decoding

The traditional approach to reading, phonetic decoding,  starts with memorizing the letters and sounds of the alphabet. Then the letters are put together to builds words that the student can say and thus get their meaning. It takes 5 years. 

The waste of time that phonetic decoding entails is not the only its unexpected consequences

It does not work for 20% of the population and these students are called dyslexic. A large portion of the educational budget is spent in teaching these children phonetic decoding. This strategy borders on abuse.

There is considerable evidence (Google Sally Shaywitz) that a deficit in phonetic decoding is due to a specific abnormality in the brain system underlying phonetic decoding. Despite this known brain dysfunction, traditional education has persisted in taking the role of neuropsychologist without training. Teaching the dyslexic to decode is like teaching the blind to see or deaf to hear.

If one were stranded without access to a phone and came across an unknown word, phonetic decoding might help. Since English is about 50% phonetic, you will have a 50% chance of saying the word correctly. Unfortunately, that tells nothing about the meaning of the word, only how to say it. That seems rather little gain for 5 years work.

Speed reading is a skill that should be more prized than it is. Speed reading avoids phonetic decoding and those years learning to decode must be overcome before speed reading. It is interesting to note that many Asian languages are pictographic not phonetic, they speed read natively.  Does that give them an advantage?

Early Reading

Our alternative to phonetic decoding starts at the same time as a baby learns to understand the spoken word. Teach them the printed word at the same time. Treat reading like listening, word by word-not sound by sound. As a baby learns to hear, the baby can learn to read. Listening and reading mature together.

PreK builds on this early vocabulary and teaches reading and writing. The children start school already reading and writing. This is equivalent to Grade 3 where children do not learn to read but learn by reading.

This is not just theory. May 2018 Early Reading started with 9 pilot sites in the slums of Nairobi and rural Uganda. Preschoolers learned to read paragraphs in 4 months. We have been building on that and, now, children can start school reading and writing.  We are exploring how to take advantage of the instructional time saved to broaden the education of Primary school children. Early Reading now exists in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Ghana.

The Advantages of Early Reading

The most important advantage is that reading is not a difficult subject you learn in school but is as natural as speaking and listening. Dyslexia, a problem for 20% of school children does not exist with Early Reading, and a decreased need for special education opens the budget for enrichment.

Since reading without phonetic decoding is one definition of speed reading, we are exploring speed reading from the start.

We know children understand us when we speak, but we are not always there. If they can read, books are always there. This leads to a most intriguing question. How will that 5-year advantage affect the intellectual and emotional development of the children of the 21st Century? I do not know, but I want to be there.