Preface to the Greg Ashman Series
This Evening News series examines the writings and claims of Greg Ashman, an educator whose views on literacy and reading instruction have gained attention in Australia and beyond. I have chosen to respond to his posts not because he is my adversary, but because he represents a wider pattern in education: confident assertions made without confronting the real reasons children fail to read.
Different Perspectives: Tweets That Sparked the Debate
Good evening, readers. The dyslexia debate often ignites on Twitter (now X) and simmers unresolved for years — tonight, we revisit one such firestorm.
Our spotlight falls on Pam Kastner (@liv2learn), a vocal advocate for the Science of Reading (SOR) and phonics-first instruction. With over 16,000 followers and roles at Mount Saint Joseph University and The Reading League PA, she's a force in pushing evidence-based literacy. But our paths crossed in heated 2020 exchanges that highlight the chasm between phonics purists and those of us advocating for innate decoding potential.
Herd Mentality and the Comfort of Consensus
Recap: Why They Block
In Part 1, I exposed how my free, results-driven lessons threaten the dyslexia intervention industry. That’s why I’ve been blocked by prominent figures like:
Jo Anne Gross
Debbie Hepplewhite
Is the Reading Reform Foundation influenced or controlled by external powers such as funding sources, political agendas, or institutional pressures?
Should there be more accountability and transparency in organisations advocating educational reforms?
I can think of only 3 probable answers to the attitudes of the committee members of Reading Reform Foundation.
They are controlled by the Funding Sources or the committee members are naïve.
Another reason could be to protect their rice bowls – intervention services and sales of educational material.
Learners generally fall into two categories: approximately 80% of children accept what their teachers present without question, often learning to read through patterns and analogies. In contrast, about 20% are logical thinkers who question everything they encounter. When their lessons conflict with prior knowledge or fail to make sense, these children may shut down or disengage from the learning process. This was already discovered by Thorndike in 1913 (More than 100 years ago). LINK
This morning I read a Tweet by Karen Vaites which had a link to the article here.
Here are some excerpts from the article and my thoughts.
“How Learning to Read Changes the Brain”.
Yes, brain imaging will show a difference in the brain before and after a child learns to read. But it does not show how the brain learns to read. No one has discovered how the brain learns to read.
Here are two tweets I have a different perspective on.
Dr. Mary Howard @DrMaryHoward Jun 13, 2023
I'd add.... ignore blatant attacks because there is no good that will come from responding.
Pick your battles & find inroads but ignore dead-end streets that lead only to a childish Twitter battleground. I learned this lesson the hard way. Share legitimate info & avoid the fray
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Jun 14
I just gave that same advice in the comments to my blog. If it's apparent the person wants to attack rather than discuss, simply block them. Picking your battles is critical, some of them purposely say outrageous things to get you to go down an off-topic rabbit hole.
I don’t ignore blatant attacks when they are silly and evil.
Yesterday, 8.5.2022 was my 4th lesson with Jack.
He still guesses instead of reading what he already knows. This is a habit which will take a little time to unlearn.
Today, I gave him the following Dolch words to memorise by rote memory:
her, all, good, some, my, this, here, soon,
I tweeted about Timothy Shanahan asking me for evidence (research reports) to show that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds.
The following Tweets ensued.
Peter Blenkinsop @ManYanaEd Replying to @luqmanmichel @ReadingShanahan and 14 others
It must be ok to ask for evidence?
Luqman Michel Replying to @ManYanaEd @ReadingShanahan and 14 others
Yes, when it is something that cannot be thought of logically. Tell me, Peter, do you really need evidence to teach consonants without extraneous sounds. Where do I look for such reports? I can give you many personal anecdotes but you won't accept them.
Peter Blenkinsop @ManYanaEd
I would expect others to be using the system you use. That is some evidence.
I learned quite a bit from Elizabeth Brown on a long Twitter discourse. Here are somethings she tweeted and my comments:
Elizabeth Brown @PhonicsMom Replying to @luqmanmichel @ReadSimplified and 2 others
With 100% whole word methods, they used flashcards for everything. Now with balanced literacy, the predictable readers are used for new words, but they also send home hundreds of high frequency sight words to be memorized with flash cards.
I read a well written blog post by Lindsay Kemeny. Here are extracts and my comments on the article. (LINK)
I have always tried to be careful with how I bring this up, because people get so upset and defensive when confronted with the fact that there is no research to support these reading strategies and, even worse, they are doing harm to students. But my patience is wearing thin on this topic. Just when I think that the tide is turning and that the majority of educators now realize the problems surrounding 3 cueing, I hear an edu-celebrity tell teachers on Facebook to simply “tweak” the strategies instead of get rid of them or a reader emails me asking me to take down this post stating that it’s only my opinion and that 3 cueing works. This particular reader told me not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but 3 cueing is exactly what needs to be thrown out. I stand by what I said. There is no research to support these strategies and you don’t need to take my word for it. You can read about it here, here, and here.
Lyn Stone had blocked me for commenting on her tweet. Only recently have I seen her tweets again. Here is one such tweet I read yesterday and believe she does not know what she is talking about other than quoting what someone had said about 20 years ago.
Here is the URL to Lyn’s video clip and my comments.
Too many so-called educators on social media block me. They block me to prevent truth being known by others. They misrepresent to promote their products.
Jo Anne Gross was one of the first to block me. She blocked me on LinkedIn when I wrote that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of dyslexia. In 2010, I also started promoting my Free of charge lessons on my blog for parents of kids unable to read. If teachers and parents know why kids are disengaging from learning to read, then Jo Anne Gross as an intervention business owner, may lose business.
The following are extracts from a blog post found here.
Every word has three forms – its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling), and its meaning. Orthographic mapping is the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers. Through orthographic mapping, students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings). They then permanently store the connected sounds and letters of words (along with their meaning) as instantly recognizable words, described as “sight vocabulary” or “sight words”. (Internet)
With orthographic mapping of a word, the letters we see with our eyes and the sounds we hear in that word get processed together as a sight word and are stored together in the brain. This is not the same as memorizing just the way a word looks. It is also important to remember that orthographic mapping is a mental process used to store and remember words. It is not a skill, teaching technique, or activity you can do with students (Kilpatrick, 2019). What can be taught are phonemic awareness and phonics skills which enable orthographic mapping.
From the discussion I had with a number of teachers on Twitter it is obvious that both a majority of phonics as well as whole language proponents are not aware that we don’t store words visually.
Here are some tweets on visual memorisation between Erin Harrington and me.
I am writing on visual memory again as there is a discussion on it on Twitter.
Most teachers assume that words are stored by visual memory. This is not an accurate assumption. Some of the phonics proponents say it repeatedly. So much so, that they have begun to believe their own lies.
Yesterday, 27.10.2020, I had a fruitful discussion on Twitter with nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia.
In brief I said at the end of the discussion:
My discussions on Twitter is not to 'fix' but to make teachers aware that we can reduce kids leaving school as illiterate simply by not teaching the wrong pronunciation of phonemes of consonants. Prevent rather than cure.
nickie simonetti @ End the Struggle#Dyslexia responded:
Agree...whenever I watch an instructional video I shudder.
Many of my shut down students looked with a quizzical look when I sounded out the words be, bee, deep, giraffe etc.After some thinking it dawned on me that it was because I had taught the letter sounds but these words use letter names.
Listen to my YouTube presentation here for letters in words using letter names.
