This is the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy John today.
I am not so genial as I always am. This is a recording. I've tried a couple of recordings.
I've got a little impassioned. Some people would say I was ranting. Here's the thing.
If you're impassioned about children reading, what about the children? Some people call
you impassioned if they're for what you're saying. If they're against what you're saying,
some people would call you ranting. So am I ranting? Where is this impassioned? I don't know,
but I'm a little peoed about this part in the Salty Language. And why that is, it's because
the Minnesota State Legislature passed a law called the Read Act, which is forcing me to lie
to my students. It says right there in the law, you must lie to your students. You think I'm just
using hyperbole, don't you? And my students, by the way, I work in a teacher preparation program
here at Minnesota State University. I teach literacy methods, and I am now required to
lie to my students. And I'm going to just explain some of the lies today. One of the standards,
which I must now teach with fidelity, says this, students must know phonological and phonemic
awareness, including, and I'm going to go through A, B, and C. The first one, they must know the
phonemes that make up the English language. That's what I must teach them. And my students must
know these. The phonemes that make up the English language. Now, a phoneme is the smallest unit
of sound. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, units of sound. In all world languages,
there's about 220. And my students must know the 44 phonemes. And I ask unto you, why is this
important that students know all of these? How many of you know all 44 phonemes? How many practicing
teachers know the 44 phonemes that make up the English language? Yet I must teach my students
this, they must know that. And I'm lying to them if I tell them that this is important. And it's
not. The second lie is part B. My students must know, and I must teach them the ways in which
reading achievement is related to phonological and phonemic awareness, comma, including the ability
to recognize word boundaries, to rhyme, and to blend segment, substitute, and delete sounds in words.
Okay. All well and good. These are things related to phonemic awareness. And the way reading
achievement is related to phonological and phonemic awareness related to reading achievement,
related to reading achievement. First, how do you define reading achievement? Is it reading
test taking? The ability to read a paragraph and fill the correct bubble? Or is it related to
creating meaning, reading achievement? Or is it related to create meaning with print and use
this use reading in a real life setting to create products and solve problems? Is the ability to
use reading in the real world or to use reading in the school world? I pause it and I tell my
students we're not getting students ready to exist in a school environment. Rather, we are
preparing them to exist in a global environment where they must interact with a variety of people
and use literacy for real purposes to solve real world problems. That's what reading achievement
is. Not to score well on your little snapshot on your one size snapshot, demonstrating their
ability to perform literacy tricks on an achievement test. Rather, reading achievement is the ability
to create meaning with print and not to extract your meaning but to create meaning with, to
analyze, to evaluate, sometimes to criticize, to synthesize what they read. That's reading
achievement and not performing like a stinking train seal. By the way, am I ranty now or am I
passionate? All right, phonological and phonemic awareness, how that's correlated with reading
achievement. And let's look at phonemic awareness but reading achievement. As any student in a
ninth grade statistics class can tell you, correlation does not infer causation. If things
are correlated, that does not mean that one thing causes the other thing to occur. Of phonemic
awareness, that does not cause reading achievement to occur. At level of phonemic awareness could be
the result of something. In this case, it's the result of being exposed to books and print and good
conversation before entering preschool in kindergarten. It's an effect of that. High
exposure, so it's the high exposure to reading that's related to reading achievement, not
phonemic or phonological awareness. It's a co-relation, not a causal relation. And this is
not to say that these things are not important. Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are
important components at the emergent level in preschool and kindergarten. But to present them
as causal variables would be lying to my students. And I must lie. And by the way, am I ranty now
or am I passionate? I always have to check. Am I ranty or am I passionate? I guess it depends
on your point of view, doesn't it? All right. The next part, reading achievement is related to
the ability to recognize word boundaries to rhyme. Yes, yes, yes, maybe some of this is, it's
important. No one is arguing with some of these things are important. But word boundaries is where
one word starts and another stops. Yes, this is concepts of print and this is basic stuff in preschool
and kindergarten. And rhyming, yes, rhymes have always been an important part of pre-K literacy
instruction. It enables you to develop phonemic awareness, hearing similar sounds and words. And
this helps students begin to recognize phonograms and other word parts. And it's important at the
preschool and kindergarten level. But of course, not grades one and beyond. And is it related to
reading achievement? Does it cause reading achievement? That, my friends, is a bit of a
stretch. Yes, there's, is there a strong causal relationship between recognizing word boundaries
and rhyming and later reading achievement? That is questionable. And does separating word boundaries
and rhyming, does that produce better results than say reading lots of books, reading, talking,
and writing? Is that direct and straight? Is that better than those things? Now let's look at
blending, segmenting, substituting, and deleting word parts. This has to do with sounds and again,
this is phonemic awareness. Is there a strong causal relationship between blending, segmenting,
substituting, and deleting word sounds and later reading achievement? Does the former lead to the
latter? Does it cause it? And is it more effective than simply a bunch of reading, a bunch of writing,
a bunch of talking about good books? No, there's no causal relationship that has been established.
But yet, the state of Minnesota requires me to lie. The read act that was enacted in May says,
Dr. Andy Johnson, you must lie to your students at Minnesota State University. And being the good
estate employee that I am, I do. I lie to them. But I tell them it's a lie. Students, today I'm
going to lie to you. Here it is. And then I tell my students why it's a lie. And I point to the
research that shows it's a lie, a variety of research studies, not just one. And then I point
to the state senators and representatives who voted for the lie. And then I show the experience of
these lawmakers who are really lie makers. I show how much experience in teaching, reading that
they've had, or reading research. And here's the biggest lie of all. I am not to mention the state
law says the three queuing systems. And I ask, is this pre-war Germany? Am I to ignore all the
research I've read over the last 30 years? Am I to ignore all my own practice teaching,
including tutoring, struggling readers over the last 10 years? Am I to lie to my students and
tell them that they must teach their students to use only a certain amount of information to
recognize words and create meaning with print? If I do this, it's going to impede their ability to
teach reading. It's going to impede their students ability to learn how to read. The sad thing is
you don't know what the three queuing systems are. You don't teach it. It's not a strategy that you
teach. It is merely a recognition that students use our brains use a multitude of data as they're
reading during the reading process to recognize words and create meaning with print. Not just
letter clues, but context clues and grammar and word order clues. That's called context. That's
called syntax, semantics, and phonics, all three of them. That's the biggest lie. I'm to tell my
students not to do this. Now, by the way, I do tell them to do this, but I don't call it the
three queuing systems. I call it neurocognitive systems or interactive systems. To not do this,
to not teach this to my students, to not teach them strategies to use to enhance their ability
students of their students to create meaning with print, that would be dishonest. The state of
Minnesota pays me to be an expert in literacy. I am paid to be a literacy expert, and I take my
job very seriously. I get up and I read research every day. I synthesize the research. I write
books and articles because the state of literacy is evolving. It's not static. It's ever evolving.
And those that say reading, it's a proven fact. There is a proven method that just shows naivety
and lack of understanding about reading research. It is not a proven state. Everything is in
evolution. And what works best for one student in one situation for one purpose may not work for
other students. To say that phonemic awareness, an important part, but that works for some students,
doesn't mean you should be teaching it in fifth and sixth grade to enable students to comprehend.
That's just kooky talk. Now, the other sad thing is, you know, in Minnesota,
science of reading people, you can't make your argument using reason and research. You've lost
the argument you can't make your case in an academic setting. So what do you do? You convince
lawmakers and you bring in a radio hooligan, Emily Hanford, and you pass laws to bully and
threaten those that have a different view than you. To bully and threaten to get your way,
not based on research and reason, but based on your perceptions, your I thinkisms. You don't
realize that the only winners here are the publishing companies, the profiteers, the corporates,
who are making millions, millions off our students and off our taxpayers and at the expense of our
students and our taxpayers. And I say to Heather Edelson, they should name this bill after you. So
five years from now, you take full credit for what you did in sponsoring this bill. I want to
call it the Edelson bill so that in five years we see that students are not any better, they're
probably worse, and the achievement gap, which is really the equity gap, will have widened. Five
years. Minnesota, at one time, I thought you were better than this to threatening people,
but apparently you're not better than this, you're worse than this. And for that, I'm embarrassed
and I'm ashamed of my state legislature. This has been the Reading Instruction Show. I am your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson.