When Prior Knowledge Blocks New Learning

 

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.”

The Thorn We Refuse to Pull

 

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.

The Blind Men and the Elephant by Dr. Richard Selznick

                                                                  Dr. Richard Selznick
 

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.

Why So Many Children Struggle with Reading

 

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.

Notifications from Grok

 

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. 

The marginally ready child

 

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.")

"Dazed & Confused"

 

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.

Must See a Neurologist

 

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.

Venting My Spleen (Once Again) by 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:

Trusting your Mom Intuition

 

I have copied the following post from Dr. Richard Selznick's blog.

Trusting Your Mom Intuition​

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:

Dr Richard Selznick comments on my post

 

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:

Corroborative evidence to my post on Identifying Students at Risk in Grade 1

 These is the first of many posts on Corroborative Evidence to Identifying Students at Risk in Grade 1.

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.

The whole universe conspires for you to achieve it.

 

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.

Hypothesis - Why Singapore consistently does better in PISA (Part 3)

                                                          

                       "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.”

Major cause of 'dyslexia'.

                                                     

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. 

Educational Intervention Part 2

 

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.

Educational Intervention

 

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?

Meaning of shut down kids

 

                                                     https://notionpress.com/read/shut-down-kids

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.

Labels like ADHD and Dyslexia can interfere - Dr. Richard Selznick

 

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.

Winning , Losing and Discovery

I don’t know if the following comment in LinkedIn refers to me but allow me to assume it is meant for me and see how I will respond if it was directed at me.

“I find the tone in how one argues makes a difference. Often it sounds as if the tones have a subtext of accusing the other person of moral failure, so it's not blatantly ad hominem but the "music" of the argument makes it so, and that just makes the other more entrenched, because they might lose face. But if you just ask a lot of questions with genuine inquiry, they might go away and change their minds, but do so privately. This way it doesn't become about winning or losing, but about discovery.”

The following was my off the cuff comment to the above.

I quote Annaleese McNamara : "But if you just ask a lot of questions with genuine inquiry, they might go away and change their minds, but do so privately. This way it doesn't become about winning or losing, but about discovery."

I don't understand why tone is that big an issue on important matters. Way back in 2010 I wrote about 'Phonological awareness deficit not being the cause of dyslexia'. I honestly do not know if the 'tones' were wrong. I wrote to more than 20 professors over several months. There were professors who had simply echoed what one revered professor had said about 35 years prior to 2010 and everyone latched on to his research paper without thinking. 

Despite logical explanations, in my emails to them, none of the professors accepted what I had 'discovered'. I wrote to more than 30 universities to no avail. After a few years new research reports were out singing the same song I had sung.

Additional comment now:

“…subtext of moral failure…………”  This appears interesting but I will come back to this another day and would be grateful for comments.

I quote “But if you just ask a lot of questions with genuine inquiry, they might go away and change their minds, but do so privately. This way it doesn't become about winning or losing, but about discovery.”

The emails to David Boulton and many other professors in 2010 have not surfaced until now. As of now they are still undisclosed.

i.                     Was mine not genuine inquiry?

ii.                   Were my emails not private?

iii.                  Is my case a matter of winning or losing? If it was, would I have not written to the more than 20 professors saying or rather singing “I am the winner, I am the winner”. Did I write to anyone and say “I told you so”?

No, I did not as it is not important anymore. I wanted the world to accept my discovery and it has been accepted. Yes, it is about discovery. Sadly it is not Luqman’s discovery but so what? What does it matter?

Now, let us look at Timothy Shanahan's blog in 2015 – that is 5 years after my emails to all the experts who had echoed what one guy had told the world more than 35 years ago.

http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/decoding-dyslexia-a-rose-by-any-other-name#sthash.t2ZJN867.AGuTY3ZX.dpbs

“The term dyslexia has been, justifiably, controversial, and has consequently been avoided by most reading educators—including me.

There are scads of studies revealing that dyslexia is phonological in nature. That is, students with this disorder have a particularly difficult time perceiving phonemes and coordinating this perception with the letters on the page.

…. NICHD research suggests that when elementary kids have reading problems, they tend to be problems with phonological awareness and decoding about 86% of the time.”

My comment: Don’t forget “Scads (numerous) of studies revealing that dyslexia is phonological in nature”. 

Also, please remember this was in 2015 when what I wrote was in 2010.

What does Timothy Shanahan say in September 2017 in his blog above?(Revision of his 2015 blog post)

“This explanation of dyslexia seems especially pertinent ….. and the only thing I would change in it now is the estimate of the phonological/phonemic awareness role in reading problems. There are some more recent data in relatively large studies suggesting a somewhat lower incidence of these problems at least with some populations; that wouldn't change the overall thrust of this much, but it would be, perhaps, more accurate.”

My comments: Look at the dates – I wrote extensively to professors, universities, Dyslexia Associations, Ministers of Education in UK, US, NZ and Australia and in comments in blogs and anywhere I could write in 2010. I wanted the misguided definition that dyslexics could not read because of phonological awareness deficit to be done away with.

Many of the professors who just echoed what one guy had told many years ago did not respond to my emails but one did and apologised saying that she is not an expert in this and referred me to Dr.Sharon Vaugn whom she had quoted.

I wrote to Sharon Vaugn an introductory email which received an immediate response.

I then immediately wrote and asked her about her stand on Phonological awareness and its role in dyslexic kids and said that I disagree with what I have read and gave her reasons for my disagreement. There was no response.

Were my emails to Sharon Vaugn private or not? I am disclosing about this email only now to let you all know that it was private.

Wouldn’t it be better to admit a mistake for the benefit of the kids of the future? Is face saving more important than Millions of children all over the world who are classified wrongly as dyslexics?

Not responding to questions appears to be a practice among many professors in US. There are a few exceptions like Prof Joe Togerson and Dr. Richard Selznick and our Prof.James Chapman in NZ.

Note: See how our Timothy Shanahan covers his mistake in 2015 with “suggesting a somewhat lower incidence of these problems at least with some populations; that wouldn't change the overall thrust of this much, but it would be, perhaps, more accurate.”

What is my purpose of writing all this now?

1.       To request educators to use common sense and think for the benefit of our future generation.

2.       To not blindly rely on past research reports. If what is informed makes sense and appears contradictory to what is commonly believed then do a research without being biased.

3.       To listen to those who are speaking from experience.

4.       To ask yourself as to why one – Luqman - would spend so much time writing to various universities, professors etc. Does he have an agenda? Did he subsequently write to all the universities and professors and say “I told you so”?

5.       To inform those who had commented in the page above about ‘wrong tone’ that they should not just look at the current event and make a wrong conclusion. Like I said I have been writing on two issues. One (Phonological awareness deficit being the cause of dyslexia) has been resolved and one more which is even more important than the one resolved and needs to be discussed by all concerned educators – ‘Why kids disengage from learning to read?’

This is getting too long. Let me come back next week with the balance of comment in the post above and my response.

I had kept my emails private. I used courteous language. I wrote again to David Boulton in 2015 without reminding him of the emails in 2010.

I did not write to any of the professors or University asking them for some acknowledgement of my contribution. (Perhaps I should have requested for an honorary degree of some kind as I see many educators viewing my profile in LinkedIn and then not bothering to respond to my comment in their posts.)

 If I have to say so myself:

1.        I am the first person in the world to say that ‘phonological awareness deficit’ is not the cause of dyslexics not being able to read.

2.       I am the first person in the world to come up with an answer to the frequently asked question as to why the illiteracy level is as high as it has been for decades.

The important matter is the future of our children and that is all that matters to me right now. This is not a matter of revenge or making people ‘lose face’. I have asked again and again to be grilled on what I have found.

For those who come mid way of discussions and comment without knowing what is going on, I would urge you to read my past posts before jumping in.

My contention is that a majority of kids who are classified as dyslexics are classified wrongly. These kids are unable to read because they have been taught phonics in the wrong way which confuses them. Read my past articles carefully and grill me.