The Born-Yesterday World of the Reading Experts: A Critique of Recent Research on Reading and the Brain

Two different and opposite kindsof readers are developed at the very beginning stages of reading instruction asthe result of different and opposite kinds of teaching.¿ One kind of reader is taught to read by the"sound" of print and reads automatically and with great accuracy.¿ The other kind of reader is taught to read bythe "meaning" of print, as Chinese characters are read, and not only readsinaccurately, but is actually encouraged to do so by so-called "psycholinguisticguessing."¿ The Born Yesterday Worldof the Reading Experts reviews some of the recent papers by highlyrecognized "experts."¿ It explains whylittle beginning readers are critically harmed when they taught to read by the"meaning" method outlined by these "experts."¿Such "experts" seem to know nothing about the history of reading, andlittle about the very nature of reading itself.

On sabbatical leave in 1977-1978,Geraldine E. Rodgers observed first-grade reading instruction and testedresultant second-grade oral reading in Americaand Europe (using part of an IEA test form).¿ The oral reading of about 900 second gradersin their own languages demonstrated that two opposite types of readers (ormixtures of the types) result from teaching beginning reading by "sound" or by"meaning".¿¿ She later discovered that Oskar Messmer in 1903 turned upthe two types in his research, naming them "objective" and "subjective."¿ Current researchers remain oblivious to thefact that there are two types of readers, one very competent (objective"sound") and one very incompetent (subjective "meaning").