Canada: What are your 'fringe' political ideas?

[Anthea Fraser Gupta]

Well this gets interesting...

One country's fringe is another's mainstream.

Ron says he would like to:
> (a) Institute first literacy in a phonemically based spelling 
> for all English speakers. We know it works, we know that kids 
> so treated quickly surpass kids who do only traditional spelling.

In the UK teachers are REQUIRED to teach using phonics. In the 1960s there was an experiment with the Initial Teaching alphabet, which was not successful. Do we know this works?

Ron's (a) clashes with his (b):
> (b) Develop a policy of respect for dialects such as 
> Appalachian, AAVE, etc.
> that children bring to school, and USE them in early 
> education especially.

In the UK children grow up thinking they have to pronounce English in a certain way as a result of over enthusiastic phonics teaching, and that their pronunciation is wrong.

It is not how you read at the age of 6 that matters, but how you read (and write) at the age of 16. Early acquisition of literacy is not what matters.

For the UK, I would like....

1. It should be recognised that children are ready to learn to read at different ages.

2. It should be recognised that the earlier you start teaching literacy, the more time you spend doing it (the same is true of toilet training). Children need to have time to play and develop social skills. Teaching literacy to all 3-6 year olds is not the best thing for them.

3. Teachers should be free to teach literacy by whatever means they think will work. Not all children learn best through phonics.

4. Reading should be about content and enjoyment, not about decoding.


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Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT <www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>
NB: Reply to a.f.gupta at leeds.ac.uk
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