Lipstick on the Pig — Recycling Narratives While Illiteracy Persists

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Lipstick on the Pig — Recycling Narratives While Illiteracy Persists

Opening Challenge

For decades, literacy rates have stagnated. Every few years, a new theory is paraded as the solution. Yet children continue to leave school as functional illiterates. The question is unavoidable: Is anyone truly interested in reducing illiteracy, or only in preserving their narratives?

 

The answer matters, because every recycled theory cost children their chance at literacy. Each decade of avoidance is another generation lost.

 

The PAD Era and Its Collapse

In 2010, after six years of teaching so‑called dyslexic children, I began writing extensively that phonological awareness deficit (PAD) was not the cause of dyslexia.

 

My students could read in Malay and Han Yu Pin Yin but not in English. If they could decode in two languages, how could their difficulty in English be blamed on a “deficit”?

 

Research students who visited my blog produced reports agreeing with this discovery.

 

By 2017, PAD was debunked. But instead of admitting the error, gatekeepers simply rebranded it as “phonemic awareness.” As one critic put it, this was nothing more than “painting lipstick on a pig.”

 

I have been raising this issue publicly since 2010, yet the establishment continues to sidestep it.

 

The Common Factor Ignored

Whether under Whole Word or phonics regimes, functional illiteracy persists.

 

The common factor is confusion from wrong teaching.

 

Children are asked to blend sounds that don’t match the words: kuhahtuh for cat, luhahmuhbuh for lamb. When they fail, they are blamed for lacking “awareness.”

 

The real issue is not poverty, vocabulary, or comprehension. Those come later. The first step is decoding — teaching the correct sounds of letters and making clear that most letters represent more than one sound.

 

Evidence of Avoidance

In my correspondence with Nora Chahbazi of EBLI, I emphasized decoding as the root issue.

 

Her replies acknowledged my points but sidestepped them, framing my input as “similar to others” and shifting focus to Balanced Literacy voices.

 

The Right to Read team, including Kareem Weaver, has avoided direct engagement with my arguments, even when I raised them repeatedly on social media.

 

This avoidance reveals a pattern: institutions prefer to recycle narratives rather than confront the uncomfortable truth.

 

The Absurd Diversions

For how many more decades will we keep blaming poverty, comprehension, or vocabulary for children’s inability to read?

 

These are downstream skills. Without decoding, comprehension and fluency are impossible.

 

To suggest otherwise is not only misguided — it is absurd.

 

Call to Action

Stop recycling failed theories under new names.

 

Stop diverting attention to fashionable debates while children remain unable to decode.

 

Start with the basics: teach the correct sounds, acknowledge multiple representations, and use practical tools like Dolch words to build confidence.

 

Only then can vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency follow.

 

Until decoding is taught correctly, every other debate is lipstick on the pig.