For many years I have made a simple observation.
When we teach the sound of the letter b, many of us do not say /b/. We say "buh." When we teach the sound of the letter t, many of us do not say /t/. We say "tuh." Likewise, /k/ often becomes "kuh" or "cuh."
I argued that teaching letter sounds without extraneous “uh” sounds is essential. Yet, even schools using Jolly Phonics from day one still produce functional illiterates. Why? LINK
The deeper answer lies in prior knowledge — what children have already absorbed before formal instruction begins.
Dr Naomi Fisher recently reminded us that schools were not designed with child development in mind. Chris Benson added that the rush into formal education is largely an English-speaking phenomenon, noting that his own children thrived in a system where formal schooling began later.
I asked Chris a direct question: What do you suggest we do to reduce the percentage of children leaving schools as functional illiterates? His reply was that this is a societal issue, not one schools alone can fix. ‘Do you have a response?’ he asked.
Pamela Snow once said I was “focusing too narrowly.”
Dr Karen Faulds suggested phonics may not foster a love of reading.
Both miss the point.
Claude Bernard put it cleanly: “It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.”
Two children can sit through the same lesson and walk away with completely different messages. The difference is not simply effort or ability. It is shaped by neurodevelopment, prior experiences, sensory processing, and a sense of psychological safety. Achievement is never just a response to instruction — it is a response to the meaning the learner’s brain has assigned to that instruction.
This shifts the fundamental question of teaching. We must ask not only “What did I teach?” but also “What did this learner experience?” That second question turns inclusion from aspiration into everyday practice.
The Power of Prior Experiences
Prior experiences — whether earlier success or failure, relationships with teachers, cultural messages, or the information a child has already absorbed — act as a powerful filter. New information does not automatically overwrite what came before. Learning is constructive. The brain builds on, or collides with, existing models.
When a child has been taught something inaccurately, the old mapping often remains dominant. The new information may be distorted, ignored, or even experienced as threatening. Disengagement follows. This is one reason a stubborn percentage of students leave school with functional literacy difficulties that persist for decades.
A Concrete Example: Letter Sounds and Dyslexia
In more than a decade of specialist teaching I have worked with over 80 dyslexic students. All of them came from wealthy families, so socioeconomic disadvantage was not the barrier. Yet almost all arrived with the same foundational problem: they had been taught letter sounds with extraneous “uh” sounds — buh, cuh, tuh, and so on.
These impure sounds create lasting interference. Blending becomes distorted. The brain stores an inaccurate link between letter and sound. Later, accurate teaching collides with the earlier model and is often rejected.
When I deliberately helped these students unlearn the incorrect versions and replace them with pure, crisp phonemes (no added schwa), the change was dramatic. Decoding improved. Confidence returned. Many went on to excel. Without that unlearning step, the faulty foundation can contribute to students leaving school as functional illiterates — a description Tom Cruise himself has used of his own school years as a dyslexic student who struggled severely with reading.
Why This Matters Beyond Any Single Classroom
If the same teacher can produce such different outcomes depending on what each child already carries, then uniform delivery of “correct” content is never enough. Diagnostic teaching must surface the existing maps — factual, emotional, and relational — and create the psychological safety and structured practice needed for revision.
Socioeconomic factors, attendance, overall instructional quality, co-occurring difficulties, and the home literacy environment all interact with these priors. My own students show that wealth alone does not protect a child from the consequences of inaccurate early teaching. That is why, since 2010, I have made my lessons freely available on this blog: so that parents without financial resources can still access the precise, pure-sound instruction that has made the difference for so many.
Prior learning is not only about academic content — it also includes the emotional scripts children carry. A child who has repeatedly felt unsafe or humiliated in learning contexts may reject even accurate instruction, because the brain tags it with the same threat response. Fixing literacy therefore requires not only correcting faulty sounds but also rebuilding trust in the learning process.
From Aspiration to Practice
Educational environments are continuously communicating. Every seating arrangement, every tone of voice, every modelled sound, and every piece of feedback is assigned meaning by the learner’s brain. When we treat prior learning as data rather than an inconvenience, and when we are willing to help students unlearn what is blocking them, we turn inclusion into a daily reality.
The question remains simple and powerful:
Not only “What did I teach?”
But “What did this learner experience — and what must now be revised?”
That is the work. And it is work that every child deserves, regardless of the resources available at home.
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.
Early wrong input is hard to undo. Claude Bernard saw it in the 1800s. Thorndike proved it in 1913. Charlie Munger explained why the mind closes the door.
For years I have been warning about instructional videos that teach consonant sounds with extraneous “uh”. These videos don’t just confuse children — they cause many to disengage completely from learning to read.
It's Often the Teaching, Not the Child
In 2010, my mentor, Dr. Richard Selznick, shared a profound insight that has stuck with me ever since: most children on the left side of the bell curve aren't truly "disabled" in the clinical sense. Instead, they are often "teaching disabled" or "curriculum disabled." These kids thrive when given structured, explicit instruction with ample practice and immediate feedback. True dyslexia—where a child struggles profoundly even with the best teaching—is far rarer.
The first sentence in the image above says little was known in the old days.
But, many matters discovered and explained in the old days have not entered the brains of many of our present-day educators including Mark Seidenberg.
One of the most important theories proposed by Thorndike in 1913 (more than 100 years ago) is that what is learnt in the initial stage is important. New ideas that do not reconcile with old ideas will be rejected by the minds of a majority of people.
There is another quote from even much earlier as follows:
It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning. (Claude Bernard 1813 - 1878)
A kid’s prior knowledge can help or hinder learning. Prior knowledge influences how kids interpret what they are learning. When the knowledge a kid has from previous learning is inaccurate it will interfere or impede new learning.
