The Paradox of Reach Without Amplification
My blog has been read more than 3.7 million times. Last month alone, nearly half a million readers visited, and thousands continue to read daily. Yet despite this reach, not a single teacher, researcher, or literacy advocate has shared my posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Substack. The silence is deafening.
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.”
Why extraneous sounds shut down curious kids
If a runner is limping, the first thing I would do is check whether a thorn is stuck under his foot. Pulling out that thorn comes before looking for deeper medical explanations. In the same way, when children disengage from learning to read, the first step is to examine the most immediate source of confusion: the way consonant sounds are taught. Even Sue Lloyd, author of Jolly Phonics, agrees that “saying the sounds as purely as possible is important.” That acknowledgment matters, because teaching letters with extraneous sounds—“buh” for /b/, “duh” for /d/—is not a trivial detail. It is the thorn that causes many otherwise curious children to shut down. To dismiss this as a “narrow focus,” as Pamela Snow has suggested, is unacceptable. Until we remove that thorn, no amount of broader theorizing will help children walk, let alone run, toward literacy.
This is a repost of an article written by my mentor, Dr. Richard Selznick, several years ago. Its message remains as relevant today as ever, reminding us to keep our focus on the heart of the matter when helping children learn to read. LINK
The parable of The Blind Men and the Elephant has echoed across centuries as a cautionary tale about partial truths and fragmented perspectives. Each blind man, grasping only one part of the elephant, confidently describes the whole animal—yet each account is incomplete, even misleading.
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.
I have been shouting at the top of my voice since 2010 why many intelligent kids shut down from learning to read. Except for a handful such as Dr. Richard Selznick and Dr. David Kilpatrick hardly anyone bothered to understand. Many of the blocked me on social media. Now, these people who blocked me will hear it from Grok.
Here is a post by my mentor Dr. Richard Selznick that caught my eye.
One that caught my eye was an article by the late learning dishabilles pioneer, Dr. Jeanette Jansky, called, “The Marginally Ready Child.”
In the opening of the piece, Dr. Jansky refers to early elementary grade children who rarely get anyone’s attention and are only, “marginally ready.” (In effect, they're borderline "ok.")
I simply could not believe that this was a question to an eight year old student. I wrote to the author and here is my email.
I have handed my Vistana Heights matters to my solicitor. Now, I am available to continue with this blog which I have neglected for quite a while.
Here is a post by my mentor Dr. Richard Selznick.
I have copied below the whole article from Dr. Richard Selznick’s post, dated 30.1.2025 LINK
Those of you following this blog for some time know there are some recurring themes in these posts. Frequently, the blogs are my outlet for getting things off my chest that frequently come up in my interactions with parents.
If you’re a relative newcomer, I will help to bring you up to speed with some of the predominant ones:
I have copied the following post from Dr. Richard Selznick's blog.
As part of the assessment process I always conduct an interview to get an overview of the issues of concern.
When a child is struggling, typically there will be suggestions of disorders that have been raised by different professionals along with opinions offered from friends, family members and the internet as to what is going on with their child.
As an example, a mom recently said the following:
I received an email from Dr Richard Selznick commenting on my post yesterday.
Here is a little about him extracted from a website.
Dr. Selznick is a psychologist, a nationally certified school psychologist, and a graduate school professor. As the Director of the Cooper Learning Center at Cooper University Hospital (www.cooperlearningcenter.org), he oversees a program that assesses and treats a broad range of learning and behavioral problems in children. The Cooper Learning Center is the leading program in its region, offering not only assistance with children but also parent and teacher training programs.
Dr. Selznick also functions as a school consultant, and throughout the year he speaks to numerous parent groups, schools, and regional conferences on topics such as dyslexia, parenting, and ADHD. He strives to offer parents and teachers practical strategies to help children with academic problems. A native of Staten Island, New York, Dr. Selznick lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey. He can be reached through email Selznick-r@cooperhealth.edu. For more information on the Shut-Down Learner, go to www.shutdownlearner.com
This is his email received yesterday. 28.11.24.
I enjoyed your blog. A few points:
Dr. Richard Selznick, my mentor, in my discussion with him in 2010 said:
I agree with you that many of these kids are instructional casualties and if they had been taught differently, many would not have shut down.
Most of my thousands of patients, who could not read, pronounced the consonants with extraneous sounds.
Please keep in mind that what I say and how I respond are based on my experiences and understanding of the research. I am not a scientist or researcher, but respond from my decades of clinical experience.
Yesterday, 2.10.24, LinkedIn prompted me to request a connection with Dr. Steve Truch.
Sometimes, I request for connections but I seldom read the profile of the members I request connections.
This was an exception and I viewed his profile and was excited to read the videos listed on his profile.
I have said several times that when you want something, the whole universe conspires for you to achieve it.
There are many things that I have done in my life where Mother Nature provided the information I required. Let me share just 3 of many.
"There are none so blind as those who will not see".
Here is some corroborative evidence for you to ponder.
Ms. Nancy Hennessy who was the President of International Dyslexia Association from 2013 to 2015 said:
“……even if we settle on a middle number, let us say 10%; that still leaves a lot of children who are not dyslexic, whose brains are not wired any different way, who have reading difficulty.”
Here is another Tweet that was not replied to by Dr. Sam Bommarito.
Luqman Michel @luqmanmichel
I did not speak a word with Alanna's son. I heard a recording of the sounds of the letters and told Alanna that the reason why her son could not read was due to confusion as a result of extraneous sounds taught by his teacher. She corrected him and he was keen on learning to read.
Let’s discuss this. What exactly do you disagree with, Dr.Sam?
Tell me why Alanna's son was keen on learning to read after his mother taught him the sounds of the letters without the extraneous sounds. You are familiar with this discussion on Twitter in 2020/2021.
Dr. Sam did not reply but here is an answer he Tweeted in January 2021 to Alanna Maurin’s Tweet.
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Jan 4, 2021
What works with one child doesn't always work with another. Glad you found something that is working for your student. Here is a blog in which I try to make it clear one size doesn't fit all.
This appears to be a stock answer.
Here are a few extracts of the discussions with researchers I dealt with since 2010.
I quote part of one of the encouraging emails I received from Dr. Joe Torgesen in 2010:
I'm not sure why your observations are so different than others--perhaps you need to collect some objective evidence on your students, including good assessments of their phonemic awareness, grapho-phonological knowledge, phonemic decoding ability, sight word knowledge, and reading fluency before, during and after your interventions. If you did that over a period of a year, you might be able to build up a solid database from which to make your arguments, particularly if you had parallel data for those learning to read in English and other languages.
Here is a tweet I read this morning, 7.9.2023 and my reply.
Brad @BradleyKBusch
Dear lovely Twitter people, can you help? (Yes I am talking directly to you dear reader). I am trying to create a list of education interventions that were popular, but in hindsight were built on correlational not causation studies.
Does anything come to mind?
In 2018, when I wanted to write a book based on what I had learned from my students since 2004 I searched for a title. I decided on ‘Shut Down Kids’ based on Shut Down Learner written by Dr. Richard Selznick.
When I say ‘shut down kids’ it is not derogatory in any way and just refers to the fact that about 20% of kids around the world disengage from learning to read when they are confused. These kids are then classified as dyslexic when in fact they are instructional casualties. These are the kids who leave school as functional illiterates.
Following my post on the response to a question on Twitter I received the following email from Dr. Richard Selznick.
I looked back on some of your other blog posts about Phonemic Awareness and related topics.
