Asking the Questions Others Ignore

 

The Puzzle That Started It All

Every genuine breakthrough begins when someone dares to ask the questions others ignore.

 

When I began teaching my first student, I was struck by a puzzle: how could such an intelligent child fail to read in English after two full years of schooling? That simple question opened a path that has guided my work ever since.

 

As I took in more students, a pattern emerged. Many of them could read in Malay, and those from vernacular schools could read in Pinyin — yet English remained a stumbling block. This raised the next critical question: why could these same children succeed in Malay and Pinyin but not in English?

 

Small Clues, Big Insights

The answers began to surface in small but telling moments. One student pronounced “ox” correctly but refused to read “fox.” To her, the word could not be pronounced that way because she had been taught that the letter f must sound like fuh/fer. That single misstep in instruction had closed her mind to the possibility of reading the word naturally.

 

Another question followed: why do so many children taught phonics from day one still fail to read fluently? Why do they shut down and disengage from learning altogether? These questions — and the answers they led me to — became the foundation of my book Shut Down Kids (2018).

 

Evidence vs. Belief

But asking questions and presenting answers is not enough. Why is it that research done decades ago, and evidence gathered from real classrooms, is still not accepted?

 

The problem lies deeper than evidence. Strong evidence alone rarely changes professional beliefs. Once instructional practices become part of the professional identity of professors and PhDs, changing their minds becomes far harder. Teacher education has long puzzled over this: why does strong research evidence so often fail to shift teachers’ beliefs about instruction?

 

We like to imagine ourselves rational — ready to abandon mistaken ideas when confronted with proof. Yet research shows belief revision is far more difficult. New evidence is rarely evaluated in isolation; it is filtered through prior understanding, reshaped to fit existing frameworks, and often distorted in the process. Ego plays its part too. It is not easy for a PhD who has written on a theory for years to make a U‑turn when confronted with contradictory evidence.

 

Case Studies of Resistance

I saw this firsthand in 2015 when Timothy Shanahan resisted my argument that phonological awareness deficit could not be the cause of dyslexia.

 

More recently, Mark Seidenberg has claimed that consonants cannot be taught without extraneous “uh” sounds — despite clear video demonstrations showing that letter sounds can indeed be taught correctly, without distortion. These examples illustrate how deeply professional identity and ego can block acceptance of straightforward truths.

 

The Weight of Old Knowledge

This suggests that presenting compelling evidence is rarely enough. Change becomes harder when beliefs are tied to professional identity and reinforced by communities of peers.

 

The truth is, learning itself is not simply about adding new knowledge. Thorndike observed as early as 1913 that what is learned in the initial stage is decisive: new ideas that conflict with old ones are often rejected outright. Claude Bernard put it even more sharply a century earlier: “It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning.”

 

Rather than treating new ideas as isolated information, we instinctively try to fit them into what we already know. If they align, learning is smooth. If they conflict, we rarely abandon our old understanding immediately. Instead, we reinterpret the new information to preserve as much of our existing framework as possible.

 

The Real Barrier — and the Call to Action

 

This is why so many children continue to struggle with reading in English — not because of deficits in their brains, but because of deficits in the way they are taught. And this is why so many educators resist change — not because the evidence is weak, but because their professional identity makes it hard to let go of what they “know.”

 

The way forward is clear:

 

Teach letter sounds correctly — without adding extraneous vowel sounds.

 

Acknowledge multiple sounds — children must be told early that letters often represent more than one sound.

 

Revisit Dolch words — rote memorization of these high‑frequency words remains essential, despite being sidelined by fashionable theories.

 

Challenge entrenched beliefs — educators must be willing to re‑examine practices that have failed generations of children.

 

If we truly want to reduce illiteracy, we must stop protecting professional egos and start protecting children’s right to read.