This is the reading instruction show. I'm your host as always Dr. Andy Johnson. The topic of today's podcast is
reading instruction
behaviorism and the science of reading. Now
children are not always aware of their emotions.
They sometimes don't know why they're feeling their feelings and
they're not always able to express their feelings using words.
But children do communicate. It's just not with words.
Sometimes the behaviors of children tell us things that they may not be able to express or which they may not fully understand.
In the classroom, if children are bored,
frustrated, shamed or humiliated,
it's a natural thing for them to act out.
They're communicating. They're saying with their behaviors. I'm bored. I'm frustrated. I feel shame.
I feel humiliated and I'm sick of being made to feel stupid.
Negative behaviors are sometimes a positive response to a negative situation.
Now think about what you do when you're in a meeting and somebody rambles on and on about nothing.
Or if you're listening to a boring speech and the speaker says in conclusion about eight times before
finally concluding,
what do your behaviors begin to look like?
Do you sit there smiling and listening attentively?
And think about when the people in IT assume you should know something that you have never heard of before.
Or if they tell you just to click on the red button on top of the page, but there is no red button.
Think about how you react if a person is driving slow in the passing lane on the freeway and you can't pass.
What about the person at the stoplight who's looking at their cell phone and doesn't see that the light has changed?
The light has changed to green.
Do you smile and say, thank you?
I'm guessing you don't and I'm guessing that most of you aren't eight years old either.
Children communicate with their behaviors.
But in the world of school, what happens then?
We blame them for their behaviors.
We try to make their behaviors go away.
We say to them, you bad children, you your behavior is bad.
But we're communicating. They say we're telling you that we're bored frustrated, shamed and humiliated.
You bad children, you you shouldn't feel bored frustrated, shamed and humiliated.
Why they ask why shouldn't we feel bored frustrated, shamed and humiliated?
Because the stuff we're doing to you is research based.
It's the science of reading, you see. It's evidence based. There's research.
Wait a minute, they say. Research says that you should bore, frustrate, shame and humiliate children.
What kind of evil research is that? They ask.
No, no, no, you silly children. You don't understand.
That's why your children and we're adults. Children are silly and ignorant.
Adults are wise and good.
Do wise and good people bore, frustrate, shame and humiliate children?
Should we call child protection services?
No, no, no, they say you don't understand.
You're not being bored, frustrated, shamed and humiliated.
We're not. Then why are we feeling bored, frustrated, shamed and humiliated?
Because you're learning, damn it. That's what learning is.
Don't you know anything? I guess not, they say.
Now sit down, shut up and learn, damn it. You're going to learn real hard.
Then we're going to test you. And if the test shows you haven't learned, we're going to learn you even harder.
We'll learn you so hard that you'll never want to learn again.
But we don't want to be learned. No, they say.
Don't be silly. You silly ignorant children.
Of course you do. And we're going to learn you every day for the rest of your school lives.
And then crying could be heard.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time in a land far away, reading instruction was meeting based.
Life was good.
Children read and enjoy good books.
They talked about good books.
They got to choose the books that interested them.
And they got to write stories about things that they experienced and say things that they want to say with their writing.
Children were not treated as standardized products in this land far away.
They were not forced to move in lockstep on a conveyor belt.
As a predetermined series of reading sub skills were pounded, pounded, pounded into their heads at predetermined times, inscripted predetermined ways.
And teachers were treated with respect in this once upon a time place.
They were allowed to use their professional judgment in what they taught and how they taught it.
They were allowed to make the choices that would enable their students to best succeed.
And college graduate tuition was low enough so that teachers could afford to take legitimate professional development courses.
And not the for-profit boondoggles that are being marketed as science of reading.
And state politicians stuck to what they knew best, giving tax breaks to wealthy taxpayers and wasting taxpayer money.
And teachers enjoyed teaching and children enjoyed learning and children learned to read and they learned to enjoy reading.
Different goals were set for different children based on where they were and it was good.
But one day, Ortis Hemingill, the evil wizard of Cambium said,
We must have control. We must have profits. Tell the people that there is a reading crisis.
But there isn't a reading crisis, said his assistant Stanley.
Ortis Hemingill, the evil wizard of Cambium, hit Stanley.
If I say there's a reading crisis, there is a reading crisis.
Oh, oh, of course. What was I thinking? Sorry, boss.
There's reading and there's a crisis. Therefore, there's a reading crisis.
We just have to convince people that there's a reading crisis.
So Ortis Hemingill, the evil wizard of Cambium, thought for a bit and said,
Mothers of Liberty. What? Mothers of Liberty. That's the answer.
Said Ortis Hemingill, the evil wizard of Cambium, who could be against Mothers? Nobody.
And who could be against Liberty? Well, fascist dictators. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
But besides that, evil wizards. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Besides that,
large for profit corporations. Well, right. Yes. Besides that,
political groups who want to stay in power. Yeah, right, right.
But besides that, who could be against Liberty? White nationalists who want to promote their ideology.
Yes, yes, yes. Besides that, religious fundamentalists who want everyone to adopt the religious belief system.
Yes, yes. But besides that, who could be against Liberty?
Political groups who gerrymander and suppress votes. Okay, I get it.
But let's say that lots of people like Liberty and everybody likes moms.
We just need to convince them that there's a reading crisis. Get me my flying monkeys and a bunch of flying monkeys soon darken the sky.
Their two leaders flew into the room and Ortis Hemingill said,
Louisa, Emily, my precious monkeys, we need to convince the mothers of Liberty.
There's a reading crisis. Said Ortis Hemingill, the evil wizard of Cambium.
I can do radio documentaries. One monkey said,
I can write nonsense that looks like scholarly works at the other.
Excellent. Said Ortis Hemingill. Fly my pretties and don't come back until there's a literacy crisis.
So here's the thing. Children naturally want to learn.
They naturally want to make sense of their environment.
They naturally want to create meeting with Pritt.
When we teach children in ways that don't align with these natural inclinations, we make learning harder.
We, meaning you science of reading people, create more frustration and failures.
Thank you very much. Emily Hanford and Louisa Mott's.
And when children communicate with their behavior, then you get PBIS involved, positive behavior intervention and supports.
It's research based, you say, and it is.
But so is using electric shocks to suppress behavior and using mouse pellets to reward behavior.
And you also use social and emotional learning, which really is teaching the correct behaviors.
You seek to suppress and correct the behaviors for which you are largely responsible for in the first place.
You're addressing the effect instead of the cause because you, Emily Hanford, Louisa Mott's and science of reading ideologists are the cause.
Now, am I saying that bad reading instruction, the kind proposed by the science of reading ideologists, is the cause of all bad behavior? No.
Am I saying that PBIS should never be the cause of all bad behavior? No.
But what I am saying is this, when students are engaged in their learning and when they are enjoying what they're doing and when they're successful at what they're doing,
when learning is something they do instead of something that's done to them, there are far, far more than just a few things that are not.
And why do I bring up PBIS and social emotional learning in the first place?
Well, MTSS, multi-tier systems of supports, includes PBIS and social emotional learning.
It's the latest shiny new thing. Now, RTI, which was a very effective way for addressing academic issues related to reading, writing and math,
they took that and they jammed a bunch of PBIS behaviorism and social emotional learning.
More behaviorism onto it, a perfectly good thing like RTI and they ruined it.
The claim was that behaviors got in the way of learning. So we need to use PBIS. We need to PBIS all those naughty kids.
But you see MTSS is backwards. The bad reading instruction, like the science of reading slop being forced on teachers, is the cause.
Naughty behaviors is the result. This has been the reading instruction.
I'm your host, as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.