thing. Okay, I'm recording. This is Andy Johnson, the reading instruction channel, and I'm here
with Claude Goldenberg, and he was saying such good stuff that I said, don't waste it on me.
We got to let other people hear this good stuff. So Claude, you were talking about the importance
that we discussed, that we have different views on things.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, disagreements are, we shouldn't shy away from them. We shouldn't fear
them. We should, I mean, not to be polyannish about it, but we should embrace them. But we should
embrace them in the sense of wanting to understand, understand other people's perspectives, which then
helps us understand our own perspectives. And so when I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago
in anticipation of the webinar that you hosted with my colleagues sort of from
Cabe, California Association for Violent Education, I was just thrilled that you responded positively.
I asked you to, you know, may you do a guest gig on my sub-stack? You invited me to be here on your
podcast. And here we are. I mean, I welcome it, and I thank you for it. And I look for people that
might have different ideas. Because as I was telling Claude, as I encountered new information,
rational human beings evolve and change their thinking. And the way I think about things
10 years ago is different than I do today. And I hope it's different in 10 more years. I hope I
continue to evolve and change my thinking. Does that make me wishy-washy? No, that makes me a good
human being. I agree. And I want to join you in that category, you know, of not wishy-washy,
but open to consider other perspectives. And as I was telling you, my frustration is when it's
difficult to engage with people, when they don't want to hear other perspectives or explain to me
their perspective. And I was just contrasting the reaction I got from you to the reaction I got
when I tried to reach out to Edgar Langdon. Somebody else. Okay, fair enough, somebody else
who was just not interested in discussing with me. And I find that unfortunate because we get
stuck in our, I mean, we can talk about it politically, there's a lot of that going on
politically. Enough said about that. But in our own world of literacy research and practice and
policy, there's just not sufficient engagement to use a political term across the aisle. And I find
that very disparating, very disparating. So I want to again thank you and applaud you for your openness.
And I agree as well. When I post online, I do have snarky language. Sometimes I admit that up front.
But I've tried reason and research for years and I'm pretty much ignored. But if people say,
if people respond to me, I will respond to their ideas in a respectful way. But it's usually
demeaning. I haven't taught, I don't know anything. And this or that other thing, which is fine. I
could be a bad human being. That's a given. But what exactly do you disagree with me about?
Yeah. And I find it troubling that teachers are afraid to speak out because they fear for the
jobs about literacy. Yes, that is true. That is absolutely people feel and again, it's true.
It's not just in our field. It's not just in our domain. It's a kind of a general human condition.
And again, we're seeing this in many domains and spheres of life. It is really unfortunate when
people feel like they can't express another opinion, another perspective. It is kind of a
balancing act because on the one hand, there needs to be cohesion in organizations and
whatever human endeavors, networks and so forth. Because without cohesion, everything just sort
of fragments. But at the same time, you need to make room. You want to get away from groupthink.
From just hanging out with the people who agree with you, reinforce you. And that has problems
of its own. So we agree in principle, but actually enact that is a challenge. And it's a constant
struggle to kind of balance the two need for cohesion, but also need space for individual to
express their concerns, bring different information to the fore, different data, call it research,
call it perspectives. That's the balancing act that I think is very difficult to pull off. But
I think we have to aim for all the time. Okay. Well, one of the things that led to this conversation
was the idea of the reading war. Do you want to start there? Sure. So the question, I guess,
when you start there, do we start with the question of, is there a reading war? Are there reading
war? And just to backfill a little bit for you and our audience on the sub stack that I started
a few months ago, I invited people to a conversation. And what's a sub stack? I'm sorry. Oh, no,
that's okay. Oh, I thought you seemed to me like you are a social media gonzo. So no. So a sub stack
is like a, it's like a gussied up blog. Okay. It's a really a wonderful platform where people can,
you know, post their ideas, invite people to engage. It's very, very similar to a blog,
but it's got a lot of other attributes that make it sort of ready made for this kind of
free exchange of ideas. And you have recorded comments and interaction?
Yes. Yes. In fact, that's, that's what I'm, I'm trying to get more, more involved. So my first
foray into this was to, you know, host a conversation. I was hoping to do it on the sub stack. I mean,
if anyone's interested, just go to substack.com and you'll find out what this is. And if you
search for me, you know, you can find my sub stack, which is entitled, we must end the reading wars
now. So the first conversation I want to have with people, which we actually had on Zoom,
because sub stack is not a really good platform for the kind of interaction with lots of people
that I wanted to have. So we started on sub stack, then we moved over to Zoom. Okay. And the, the
opening question was, Oh, is there a reading war? I mean,
Let's have that conversation. Absolutely. Because I know our audience wants us to get into reading.
Yes, absolutely. So, you know, a lot of it is sort of semantics. That's, that's what language is,
you know, sound and meaning, that's language, meaning semantics. Would you call it a war?
Would you call it a kerfuffle? Would you call it a series of freighted discussions? And you're
right. In one of your emails, Andy, you said that was a term that was coined by the media. And,
and that's actually true. The first, according to my AI bots and the research that I've done,
the first instance of the reading wars appearing in print was in an Ed Week article
from 35 years ago, an article by someone named Rothman, Robert Rothman. And he, the title of
the article in Ed Week was from a great debate to a full scale war disputes over teaching,
reading heats up. So it was coined in the media. But in fact, it's been picked up by academics. I
mean, Jeff and Peter Bowers, I'm sure you know them UK academics, they wrote an article in the
Washington Post on the reading wars. Brian Camborn, I'm sure you know that name. He wrote a brief
history of the reading wars, our own famous David Pearson, you know, eminent academic in this area.
He wrote a 2004 article on educational policy called the reading wars. So it's not true that it's a
purely, how should I say, journalistic confabulation, something constructed by the media
in order to make people fight against each other. It's been adopted very wide scale, the term.
Now, is it still has it outlived its usefulness? I think undoubtedly yes. That's why I think we
need to end it. Whatever you call it, kerfuffle. Now, we still have disagreements, but we have the
kind of disagreements that you and I are having that we're going to we'll get into some substantive
issues. But the people on the zoom that we had all agreed. Yeah, there are these wars, and there
are these wars, and they're not, and they're not helpful to anyone, certainly not the children,
and need to figure out a way to talk through them, think about them, engage in a way where the war
like metaphor no longer makes sense. I think that was the message I got. Very good. Very good. So
I will see your point that it is leaked over to some in the educational context. I will,
that's given it is used. And I agree with you that it's outlived its usefulness. And I don't like
the war concept, because that leads to destruction and good argument, an argument not in the case of
I'm yelling at you, but argument making a proposition and supporting your proposition
is at the heart of academic discourse, and heart of the academy. And last I checked reading,
and teaching was an academic endeavor. Yes, last I checked, maybe it's changed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I couldn't have said it better. So I'm not going to repeat it because. Okay. So starting at
the point that definitely the reading war, let's just leave that aside, because there's differing
views. And it seems to me those who are meaning first versus skills first approach to teaching
reading, which are you okay with that or where are you at with that? Okay, great differences,
the differences in two positions, do you say maybe there's absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think
really you hit the heart of the matter. There's been this long standing, I mean, long standing.
In fact, it goes back to Brian Camberns article, it's fairly recent. It was like 2021, I'll send
you the link, a brief history of the reading wars. And he puts the fundamental debate back to an
article by a German educator, I'd never heard this in 1779. Now, the interesting thing is that was
the heart of the enlightenment or, you know, towards the end of the enlightenment. And what it
came down to was some version of code or phonics or letters and sounds versus meaning, you know,
what should be the leading edge of teaching and learning reading and becoming literate. Now,
this has been a binary. This has been a binary that has driven this debate discussion war, whatever,
for 250 years. And I think the binary is what is extremely harmful. We need to get away from this
dysfunctional binary because it is not, do you just look at the code or you just look at meaning?
They are both important, but in different ways. And I think the difficulty is thinking about
how reading is a function is a product of navigating the code while at the same time
making sure meaning is central to the whole operation. It's not a binary. We've got to get
past the binary. And part of the problem, the interruption of the conversation,
are those who seek to make teaching an algorithm. A one size fits all. If teachers would just buy
my fancy product or do these in these steps, then we can guarantee that learning will occur,
like the Charlotte Danielson model. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of how should I call
kind of super, I think, superficial thinking, you know, either looking for something off the
shelf that will solve all of your reading problems or going to some reading guru.
That's right. Or one product away. If I just buy this product, then my reading problems will be
solved. And there are no educational messiahs. No, no, there are. In fact, I heard Michael
full in one time say the people the reason people refer to gurus is because they can't spell charlatan.
Yes. So if anyone calls you a guru, say, uh, uh, masking charlatan. I always tell my audience,
I say, I have no answers for you. I have ideas. Take the ideas that work for you. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I think that's a very important point. I would say beyond that, Andy, that what is really
what we really need is for people, you know, teachers, certainly parents, of course, the
public in general, policymakers, you know, God help us to have a deep understanding. God help.
And I'm an atheist, right? So I'm reaching, I'm reaching for straws here.
We can agree on that. God help us.
You're making me laugh too much. I'm going to be able to get anything out.
Yeah. So we need a deeper understanding of what learning to read involves, what, what,
what involves inside the brain and what has to happen outside of the brain to facilitate,
enable, promote that process. We need a deeper understanding. We need to get past
that dysfunctional binary that it says either this or that or this guru or that guru or this
off the shelf product or that off the shelf product. We just need to get into that. And if you want to
get a little more deeper into what I mean by that, I'm happy to go there, but I don't want to keep
talking. Let me pick up on your concept of God. Hang with me. Oh, God. No, I was sitting in a church
and I was thinking, even though everyone here kind of thinks they believe the same thing,
everyone has a different take on things. You cannot assume a monolithic agreement, not by
teachers, not by educators, not even by people who are adherent of a particular religion.
So that's probably true. That's probably true. That's what made me think of it when you went
off on the atheist thing. So, so back to the meaning first versus code. There's always, I don't
want to call it a pendulum swing, but there's, there's been those who have used the illusion of
crisis for their own benefit. Part of the change in the early 2000s is a result of the 2002 educational
act, which said the only knowledge that counts is that which comes from controlled experimental
studies conducted in an actual classroom. And I would actually, I think that's a very restricted
view of what counts for knowledge, but that's the only kind of knowledge that the government
would fund. Therefore, you saw this change in the types of research being published.
I would be okay with that if it were applied in all cases. And in the case of the science of
reading, that tends not to be the case. What tends not to be the case? Well, let's take an example.
For example, letters professional development. That is not used to differentiate the letters thing.
If that same standard were used, has letters shown to improve the student achievement?
Has letters been shown to improve teacher effectiveness? Has letters been compared with
something else? That's the, that's kind of the standard. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, to my knowledge,
there's been no randomized experiment that has demonstrated that letters versus something else
will lead to better results. Now, there are lots of explanations for that. Some people
will call them rationalizations. Some will call them excuses, but it is true. But at the same time,
I think it's important to try to understand. And believe me, I have no stock in letters
industries, right? I mean, I do some, I do some consulting for Lexia, like I do some consulting
and give talks for other people who want me to come and talk to their staff or sponsor
conferences or webinars, but I don't have stock in any of these industries. So just full disclosure.
But there is some very important knowledge, teacher knowledge, that letters contains that I
believe would be of benefit if more people understood. Now, there's some issues with letters.
For one thing, it's like a two year heavily very, very intensive program that requires that a lot
of it's expensive in terms of teacher time, in terms of school district time, in terms of all
sorts of things. And there's really no evidence that I know of that all of that that's contained in
there is really not even necessary or by no means sufficient to actually be a more effective teacher
and help kids. So there are some there are some legitimate questions to be asked. At the same
time, I know from talking to people, teachers, administrators, a lot of people feel like this
is good foundational knowledge that's helped them understand things that their teacher preparation
program did not prepare them to understand. Okay, let's let's I think we can't yeah,
I think we can't lose sight of that. There's a couple things. There's a couple things going back
there. First of all, I don't consult for anybody. I don't make anybody beyond my university salary.
My books don't even pay enough to support the website. So that is said upfront. The letters,
the knowledge and letters, it has not been shown that this knowledge and tell me about the knowledge
and orthographic mapping, for example, that's one thing that's been shown to be important. People
may think it's important, but is it indeed important? Does it contribute to our ability to
teach and learn? Yeah, I use the phrase that orthographic mapping is a thing, but semantic
mapping is more of a thing. They're both, they're both things. In fact, if you really, let's talk
about orthographic mapping, I mean, I don't know how weedy you want to get, we can get really kind
of weedy and you tell me if I'm going off the deep end here. But this is where breaking down the
binary, I think is really important. Because if you think about the concept of orthographic mapping,
you know, one of the linear areas, most important contributions to our understanding,
what orthographic mapping means literally is that the individual, the learning, the beginning reader,
and then as you go through your reading development, it continues. You don't leave
orthographic mapping in the dust once you pass second grade. But what orthographic mapping means
is that the individual binds or connects or maps the spelling of a word, right? It's orthographic
representation, it's visual representation. It maps the spelling of the word to the pronunciation
of the word, the phonemic aspect, the phonemic representation is mapped to the orthographic
representation. That's orthographic mapping. Now that mapping, that mapping then gets linked to the
meaning of the word. Yep. So you have the mapping of the phonology to the orthography,
then to the semantics. You see, that breaks down the binary right there. Because it's like this
three legged stool. Let's stop right there with word. Three legged stools and whatnot.
You know, Louisa Maltz has done a lot of quote research and her research essentially is surveys
and tests that that knowledge, that linguistic knowledge is not essential in reading. When
you hear the word cat, you don't link it with orthographic memory. And I'll call it memory
versus mapping because the mapping as she describes it is a form of memory. When you hear the word
cat, you link it with semantic memory. Now that doesn't mean that semantic mapping does not exist,
it does. But during the act of reading, we engage semantic memory and we don't,
we don't see words floating in space outside of context. We always see words in the context of a
sentence. So that's where I would say, okay, well, that knowledge is of interest. But I think it's
more important, the human brain creates patterns based on semantic knowledge. Thank you for your
patience. That's where I would disagree with Aries and Letters that this knowledge is important to
be a good teacher and it simply is not, has not been proven to be necessary or sufficient
for helping children create meaning with print. Does it raise course on test?
Because perhaps on a measure of spelling, perhaps does it raise scores on a phonics test?
Perhaps. But these are short term games and not long term. Anyway.
So, okay, so let's, let's dig a little deeper because I mentioned, and I don't know a lot of,
you know, when I, I'm not a neuro full disclosure, I'm not a neuroscientist, right? I don't know the
difference between my ear lobe and my prefrontal lobe. So don't ask me any hard questions.
But what I know, what I believe I know, what I think is true from the neuroscientist I've read
and interacted with is that certain things need to happen in the brain in order to read, right?
Now, before I get into that, let me make a kind of statement here that you may or may not agree with.
And that is that learning to speak and understand oral language is related to, but different from,
learning to read and write written language. I think I would agree with that.
Okay, okay, good. Written language and oral language are distinct, related but distinct.
And I've written, they are, they can inform each other, but they are not the same.
Okay, perfect. So far, so, so far, so good. See, this is good. We agree on.
It's good. I knew it. I was very optimistic and my optimism is being borne out, I'm happy to say.
Okay, so they're, so they're different. Now, we are born, and you know, there's evidence to this
from developmental neuro biologists and evolutionary developmental psychologists and so forth.
But there is evidence, and I believe it's true, that we are born wired to attend to and make sense
of human speech when an individual, an individual, a neonate, a newborn, a very young baby,
the oral stimulus, the oral signal that most gets its attention is human speech.
Now, if you have a loud, loud noise, there's a startle reflex, right? That's kind of a reflex.
But what gets volitional attention is human speech. Let me jump in there just on that point. Sure,
sure, sure. There are over 200 phonemes in the human language, and at birth, humans can perceive
all of them. But through the act of pruning, that some of these neural pathways disappear in the
ones in your language become strengthened. So around age 16 months to 18 months, human beings
have evolved to be able to attend to the phonemes around it. So this is a little bit different,
but I think it's an important distinction that we're not hard, hardwired, we're hardwired to
attend to our environment. Well, more specifically, not just to, it's differentiated. We're hardwired
to attend specifically to the sounds of human speech. That will get more attention than a truck
passing by, than the music going on. I mean, I don't say this from my own experiments because
I don't do those experiments. But the development, I can give you a citation if you'd like, but the
developmental psychologists who study these things have found that the oral signal, stimulus, call
it what you will, that most gets baby's attention is human speech, regardless of the phoneme,
because you're right, we're set up to process whatever and over time, but whatever human speech
stream comes in, that's what babies most respond to orally, just like visually, the human face
gets most of their attention. The case is because that's a mother in a human being
responding vocally to those things around them. In a thought experiment, if some baby
did not, could not hear, then they would attend to visual signs or whatever. But it's that interaction
that creates meaning. You know, Andy, I mean, thought experiments are okay, but they don't have any data.
That's the problem with thought experiments. Well, there's data to support the idea of pruning.
Well, and there's data to support that we're not hardwired for voices over one thing. You know,
there's data, it's how we interpret the data. Well, the pruning data, I don't dispute, and I don't
think it's particularly relevant here, but it's an interesting point. The data that I'm talking about
is that human speech gets the attention of very young babies more so than any other oral
stimulus or signal, right? We agree on that, but it's the cause why they do it. Well, yes. How we
interpret that, the cause. When babies are just out of the womb, how would you interpret the fact
that they are born more attentive to human speech than any other oral stimulus? How would you
interpret that? They're born with it. How would you interpret that? So a newborn attends to the
sound of a voice more than a clicking of the fingers. Is that what you're saying? Correct.
Well, that could be an innate thing. I don't know that to be true. I don't know that to be true.
Okay. I'll send you the references if you want. All right. It's been exposed to human voice,
both in the womb and as first comes out. That could be explained, but it's how we interpret that.
That's fine. But what you said is key. It's innate. I mean, you offered that as a possibility. I think
that is the strongest possibility. I won't say settled science. I will say the strongest possibility
is that attending to human speech right out of the chute is innate. That's the thing that gets most
attention. Now contrast that with print. Do you know any newborn that attends to print? Does it
have any innate intrinsic? I don't think comparison is apt because developmentally, they are not
not ready to be exposed to print. That's right. It takes a while because they have to learn that
this gets back to your point about how important meaning is. We are meaning seekers. We are meaning
creators. That's the human brain. Yes. Absolutely. And the best interpretation that I know of these
data is that intrinsically, we know in quotation marks, because it's unknown what a two-day-old
knows. But intrinsically, inherently, we know that something meaningful is coming in when human
speech is coming in. That's why that's more gets children's attention, baby's attention, more so
than clicking your fingers or a truck passing by or something. In contrast, there's no way for them
to know that there's something meaningful going on when you put print in front of them. They haven't
been exposed to it. And again, that is an unfair comparison because children are learning everything.
And if they're exposed to print over time, we learn print. They're not exactly the same. No one
says that you learn to read naturally. You learn to speak in part because you are immersed in it.
It responds to you in a very natural way. And we can use that understanding to help us understand
how we can better learn to read. Yeah. Well, if I could just one quibble here. You said no one says
we learn to read naturally. That's not entirely true. I'm sure you're familiar with the Goodman's
paper, Learning to Read is Natural. Yes. Now they distance themselves from a Russoian position,
I know. But there is this, and the Goodmans were important in propagating this, there is this idea
that learning to read is natural. And if you surround children with literacy and engage them
in print and so on and so forth, they will, it's a false analogy. What I'm getting at is it's a
false analogy to say that we learn print, reading and writing, how to navigate written language.
It's analogous to how we learn to navigate oral language. That's the point I'm trying to make.
They are really acquired in different ways. And I would say a couple things. We learn to read
naturally. That does not mean there's instruction, there is not instruction in the code. Okay.
Okay. It's a natural inclination to make sense. Children are sense making beings.
And children try to make sense of things, pre-decoding children try to make sense of that
print. So it is a natural thing to want to learn to read. That does not mean there's an absence
of phonics instruction. And I would say as well, what the Goodmans wrote in 67,
they evolve. They're thinking changed over time. And the whole language of 1975,
or the psycholinguistic theory, is different than the psycholinguistic theory of 2025.
Okay. Fair enough. So let's talk about that. Because related to all of this is whole language,
psycholinguistic theory, three-queuing, balanced literacy, all these kind of charged terms.
Yes, charged terms.
People up in arms and communicating. Yes.
So let's talk about and tell me if you agree with this. I mean, I think, and a lot of people think
this is not an original observation, that in this evolution, what you're calling an evolution,
and I completely accept that, that what was whole language in the 80s, 70s, 80s, into the 90s, maybe,
has since evolved into something like three-queuing, balanced literacy. It's kind of like the latter day
progeny, shall we say, of whole language. Would you agree with that general conception?
I would say people are confusing the terms. Whole language can be, is it a theory? Is it a philosophy?
Let us say that it's, I'll call it a theory that humans best learn within the context of the whole,
when languages whole and complete. That does not mean, and a lot of people understood it as, oh,
no phonics. Your phonics or your whole language, no. Phonics instruction is included in whole
language, absolutely, but within a holistic context to the greatest extent possible. Meaning,
some isolated word study, but we try to minimize that.
And you minimize it. Why do you try to minimize it? What's the rationale for that?
The rationale is that it can best be understood. It's less than an abstraction if you're doing
phonics instruction within the context of a sentence. So they're not, they're not reliant on
letter cues, that they're able to use semantics and syntax as well.
Right. So this actually gets back to how the difference between acquiring oral language
and acquiring written language and the, let me just say the premise or the hypothesis
that acquiring oral language is innate. I mean, we're kind of wired to acquire it,
whereas learning written language, and you're right in the sense that it's not unnatural,
because learning and teaching are natural. Right. I mean, this is the point that David Pearson has
made in discussions I've had with him. And it's an error to make this distinction between learning
to speak and understand is natural, whereas learning to read and write is unnatural.
I mean, that's another false dichotomy, a false binary. Yes. It's learning to speak,
learning to read and write is no more unnatural, or I should say is no less natural than any kind
of teaching and learning that we do. I mean, teaching and learning is part of the natural
human being psyche. People want to learn absent development, anomalies, but even kids who have
disabilities and I mean, people want to learn, they want to grow, they want to understand,
they want to make meaning, they want to communicate. To build on that, I would say that human language
is not innate. It's the learning that's innate, learning to make sense of patterns to fill in
the blank, to get stopped. So, okay. So oral learning is as natural, it's the learning,
it's the trying to make sense of things that is the natural. Right. That's right. But also
teaching. I mean, I think we're where our disagreement lies is in the extent to which
in order to learn to read and write, you need to at some level be taught, be taught in an
explicit way in a way that is not necessary for learning to speak and understand. Sure, you learn
things for modeling when we're speaking, when children are learning to speak way before literacy
per se is an issue. They learn to speak, they hear people speak, they engage in speaking,
they make utterances that are meaningless, but they're interpreted by their parents as,
oh, isn't that cute? He's trying to say, right. It's a meaning making and constructing activity
because the word again, absent developmental anomalies, you're trying to communicate and
understand and have people understand you orally. But learning to navigate written language
is a different sort of thing because it requires and it varies. Some kids need very little. It seems
to some, you know, as well as I do, that some kids learn to read as if, as they learn to read
and speak and understand. I mean, I agree with two things that you said. Yeah, sure. You said it's
different. Children learn differently. I would agree with that. It varies. And I'm sorry. I said
they learn to read and write and speak and understand differently. Okay. But the amount and type of
instruction varies that they need. Yes. Yes. That part. And I would say that all human beings need
that instruction, need that explicit instruction. I agree with you. It's not the what of phonics
instruction. It's the how and the how much. Yes. And I think lies the difference. Yes. I agree. And
part of the thing that makes it difficult is, you know, we were talking about how we all have a
tendency. This is a good thing, by the way. We got to the heart. We found kind of the heart of a
disagreement. I think so. I think so. I think there are actually several hearts, but this is
definitely an important one. It's a big heart. Let's beat this one. You've got a big heart, Claude.
You're a big hearted man. Yeah. Well, thank you. Likewise, I'm sure. So yeah. So this is true. It's
tremendous variability as there is in all sorts of human activities. So some kids need very little
direct instruction. Other kids need a whole lot. Most us normal mortals are, you know, somewhere
in between. I agree with you on that. You. Yeah, absolutely. And so the question is, the question
is how much, as you said, how much and how to provide the necessary instruction in the act of
reading. And by reading, I'm going to define reading right now very narrowly. Okay. And I
realize it's a much more expansive thing. We can talk about reading. Yeah, let's get our
definitions of reading first. That might help. Yeah. I mean, reading can be defined very narrowly
as being able to pronounce a word that's written on a page. Right. That's a very narrow definition
of reading. But reading is also metaphorical all the way up to reading the room. Right. I mean,
in all points in between, we say someone is literate. And we don't mean necessarily they
can read and write, but they're familiar with a certain literary canon. You know, how many times
we hear, oh, he's barely literate. What does that mean? Well, they haven't read the important books.
And so they're not really literate, even though they can read and write. Back to reading. I would
define reading as creating meaning with print. Okay. You can sound out words in Latin, but you are
not creating meaning in the same way. Children read and have meaningful miscues, but are still
generating deep meaning. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's that's that's fine. I mean, how many people,
how many times have you heard people say, and I have a lot. Well, I can read it.
I can read Latin. I can read Spanish. I can read Finnish. But I don't understand it. Are they using
reading incorrectly? No, they're not using reading in the way that you're saying reading
means. They're not reading. They're sounding out the words and there's a difference. But people
but people say, I can read, but I don't understand it. In which case you would say, no, no, no, no,
you're not reading. If you're not understanding, you are incorrect in saying you can read it.
Did you correct them? No, I would say you're not comprehending. There's a lot of comprehension.
But you said you're not reading. You can attempt to read. They are not comprehending what they
say. Fair enough. They're attempting to create meaning. They're just a little short. My only
point is that there are different definitions of reading, which are operative, depending on what
you're talking about. So let's go with your definition that reading is making meaning and
comprehending, creating meaning with print, creating meaning with print. That's right. Now,
and this gets back to the difference between acquiring oral language and acquiring written
language. And I just I just want to delve into the brain for just a minute. I gave my disclaimer
about not being a neuroscientist. But what I believe is true, and I think has been demonstrated,
I'm not going to say subtle science. I mean, it's a toxic term, but it's been demonstrated
the data support, the proposition that in order to be able to read, there's got to be
created something that's known as the reading circuit, or the literacy circuit, where areas of
the brain that are involved in processing sound phonology, and process the visual representations,
the orthography, connect with oral language, how that makes meaning the semantic aspects.
I said, I said something about a three legged stool with respect to orthographic mapping.
I did. I did. I did. That three legged stool has an analogy in our brain. You've got to connect
phonology to orthography to semantics. That connection is what makes reading possible.
Without that connection, reading is either extremely difficult, or some might say impossible.
That's what needs to happen in the brain. Phonology, orthography, semantics, reading circuits.
Let me respond. I too am not a neurologist, but I have tried to bring myself up to speed on the
brain research. I know a lot of this stuff. Dennehe, is that Stanislav? The methodology,
when they look at one word out of context and find which parts of the brain light up,
that's not reading. That's what they study. Andy, that is a
misrepresentation of those studies. That is many of the studies. We must look at the methodology
behind these studies. Are they studying reading online as it occurs? Are they studying a variety
of people? Are they studying one or two people? No. Words lighten up. Words in meaning, in context,
in sentences. Yes, absolutely study that. 100%. Don't believe me. I mean, don't believe Dahan.
If you don't want to. Kenneth Pugh. There are many, many neuroscientists who are studying this
and will tell you they study small bits, but they study semantics, sentences, paragraph reading.
Yes, they study that. They absolutely study that. Again, there are many, many neuroscientists in the
literacy world that have come to different conclusions and find problems in the methodology.
So which ones would you say? Huh? Yeah, who like for example,
who has found problems with methodology? Stephen Strauss? He is not a neuroscientist.
He is a PhD. Oh, he's a neurologist. He's an MD neurologist. He has, he's a clinician. And I'm
sure he's a very good clinician. I'm not going to say a single bad thing about him other than the
fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about when he when he disputes the findings based on
methodology of the neuroscience. I mean, he just doesn't know. He's not a neuroscientist. Try to
find a single article by him on any research he's done. You cannot. I've looked up and down. I've
asked him. I've asked the people who push his theories and anti theories forward. No one can
come up with a single piece of research that this gentleman has done. He must be, I'm sure he's a great
clinician, but neuroscientist, I guarantee you he is not. All right. That is my, that is my homework
assignment to look at a neuroscientist, look for research by a neuroscientist that comes to a
different conclusion. Yes. Yes. Yes, please. And I'd love to see it because like you, I'm always
looking for things that challenge what I've come to conclude for whatever reason. Yes. So yeah,
please find it and send it to me because I'm being completely on the level here. I've asked around.
No one can come up with something that he's actually any research he's done. And I'm
if I find some research that says something different, I'm happy to make a whole podcast saying
I was wrong. I admire you, Andy. I complete I really admire you. I really do because you know,
people are not sufficiently circumspect about the tentativeness of a lot of our knowledge. It's
tenuous and we got to deal with it. And I admire that. And it's very hard to change. Yeah. Once
you're embedded in a certain worldview of paradigm. Absolutely. It would be very hard just like to be
very having that political discussion with my brother. I'm not going to change his mind.
Well, let's hope we can rise above the politics of the moment. Do you think we can?
I don't know. Jesus could come back and write in big mile high sky letters that I'm right.
And my brother still wouldn't believe me. I'm not going to touch that. I'm not going to touch that
I'll take your word for it. Or Claude could get a airplane and write
in big big letters. I can't afford one. So you don't have to worry about that. We've come to and
I don't want to get too far, but we've come to some very good points where we disagree.
Yeah. And let's see if we can summarize the things where we have different views on.
What do you think we have different views on?
I think we have I think what I would identify as different view is
what and how much direct and explicit. I don't want to say
phonics but really foundation I think more of foundational literacy skills from phonemic
awareness, letters and sounds, phonics and decoding and fluency, right? That little basket of things
goes by the shorthand of phonics, but it's really more than just phonics, foundational literacy
skills. And I think where we have a disagreement is how much direct and explicit and I'll throw in
systematic foundational skills instruction is necessary for children or just normal people,
anyone who can't read or doesn't read, how much of that is necessary to facilitate and propel
literacy, acquisition and development? How much of that is really necessary?
And I would think number one, it's possible to have a conversation with people who disagree.
That's one. I think our definition of reading differs and our definition of how and how much
we'll call it phonics instruction. Is there a better word phonology?
Well, I just think of foundational literacy skills, foundational literacy skills because I think of
those as the things that connect the sounds of the language to the written representation.
I mean, that's what phonics is about in the final analysis, connecting sound of the language
to its written representation. Do you see my facial expression? I do. I see you grimace. I'm not
quite comfortable with that, but I understand. That's where we disagree. That's where we disagree.
No, I get it. I completely get it. But this is good. All right. You're right. That's an area
where we disagree. And on the efficacy of neurological research. Yeah. All right. That's a good one
as well. All right. I want to make sure we maintain our listeners so I don't want to go too long.
That's the only reason why I'm cutting this off. I can go for another two hours with you, Claude.
I really like wise, Andy. All right. So let me end the recording here.