I read this Substack article from the Scottish Union for Education this morning:
It highlights falling standards but dodges the hard truths. Here's why it's yet another evasion from those who refuse to face the real problems.
Extract:
This is despite the fact that Scottish standards in reading, math and science have been falling, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
In Part 2, I explained that clarity in instruction—the correct sounds of letters, taught step by step—is the Grail. It prevents confusion and keeps children from shutting down. But even with clarity, some children still struggle. Why?
Because the human mind is like the human egg. Once an idea has entered, it is difficult for a new one to penetrate. This is especially true for curious, intelligent children. They absorb early input eagerly, and when that input is wrong, it embeds itself deeply. Later correction often bounces off. These are the very children who shut down—not because they lack ability, but because their early learning was contaminated.
In Part 1, I wrote that people aren’t struggling because they don’t care. They’re struggling because no one aligned the path for them. That’s true in education too—especially in literacy.
For over a decade, I’ve pointed to what I believe is the “Holy Grail” of literacy reform: the actual cause of why so many children leave school as functional illiterates. It’s not hidden. It’s not complicated. It’s not a mystery.
This post is influenced by a reflection I read on LinkedIn:
People aren’t struggling because they don’t care. They are struggling because they don’t know what actually matters today.
💰 Dyslexia is not just an educational challenge—it has become a multi-billion US dollar per annum business. Every year, vast sums are poured into research, therapy programs, brain imaging, pharmaceuticals, tuition, and salaries for professionals across countless organizations. With so much money at stake, it is hardly surprising that dyslexia is often portrayed as a disease—something that can only be “treated” or “cured” through expensive interventions.
Here is my response to a Substack post on decodables.
While it’s true that not all struggling readers have the same needs, the statement “many struggling readers have phonics gaps” significantly understates the real issue for a large proportion of children.
After leaving a career in accounting in 2004 to investigate why some children read easily in Malay (a transparent orthography) but struggle severely in English, I found that the primary barrier for most persistent struggling readers is not a lack of phonics instruction per se, but the initial confusion caused by imprecise or inconsistent teaching of letter–sound relationships.
We're back with the literacy showdown. As Hunter pushes structured literacy to rescue Australia's readers, Luqman tags her from the trenches. Can policy catch up to practice?
October 2024: Hunter escalated with her Grattan manifesto, slamming the 1970s "whole-language" hangover – where kids guess words from context – for leaving a third of Year 5s unable to decode proficiently.
Good evening, and welcome to Evening News. In a nation where one in three children battles to read proficiently, the stakes couldn't be higher: disengagement, behavioral issues, and a lifetime of barriers. Leading the charge is Jordana Hunter, Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute, whose data-driven pleas for reform are shaking up classrooms. But as her blueprint gains traction, voices from the frontlines – like veteran educator Luqman Michel question if it's addressing the real flaws in how we teach. Tonight, we unpack the crisis, from stark NAPLAN gaps to a bold "Reading Guarantee," weaving in key insights from blogs, reports, and a tweet that's gone viral in edutwitter circles. Our story starts with a preventable national shame.
Support Luqman’s fight for children’s right to read and his battle to expose corruption in Sabah
Dear friends, readers, and fellow advocates for justice,
For years, I’ve dedicated myself to freeing young minds from the struggles of dyslexia. Many children I’ve taught—often at no cost—have gone from frustration to joy as words unlocked worlds they once thought closed. My book, Teach Your Child toRead, is more than just pages; it’s a lifeline for parents and schools, offering simple, effective strategies to help children read with confidence. Hundreds of copies have been distributed freely to families, educators, and schools, because literacy should never be a privilege—it’s a right.
In our main post, we challenged the dominant narrative that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness. We argued that many children already possess strong phonemic skills, and that the real barrier is distorted phonics instruction—especially the widespread habit of teaching consonants with added schwa vowels (e.g., b as “buh”).
This companion post offers practical strategies to fix that.
Across the Western world, educators and researchers increasingly claim that children struggle to read because they lack phonemic awareness—the ability to identify, isolate, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. This idea has become the cornerstone of reading interventions, teacher training, and curriculum design. But what if the problem isn’t in the child’s brain at all?
This morning I read a post in The 74 entitled: Do Kids Really Stop Learning to Read and Start Reading to Learn After Third Grade?
As usual, here are some extracts and my comments.
The Myth Repeated
I have read what the title says over and over again for years. Someone said it once, and every other person copy-pastes it across social media.
This morning I came across two tweets that highlight the ongoing confusion in literacy instruction.
Waveofthefuture (@Sustain_VA) wrote:
“Phonics can be a tool for the simplest words and should be used in the beginning. But English is not a phonetic language unfortunately so it’s a very limited tool. Don’t believe me? Try to read your own tweets using basic phonics as if you didn’t already know those words.”
And Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) tweet:
Why Kids Shut Down (And How to Fix It Without the Drama)
For weeks now, I’ve been in an ongoing exchange with @NielsHoven on X about phonics, dyslexia, and why so many bright kids end up hating reading. We agree on the fundamentals—phonics works. Full stop. Yet the conversation keeps looping, not because of disagreement, but because people refuse to click and read the links I provide. So let me lay it out clearly, using only my own words and the blog posts I keep referencing.
The Fatal Blind Spot in Phonics
The Giant Hole Nobody Talks About
Greg, like almost every phonics advocate in the English‑speaking world, believes the main problem is that teachers are not being explicit enough.
I argue the opposite: teachers are being explicit about the wrong sounds.
