My Journey Fighting Illiteracy

                                                                

Enough is Enough – The Gatekeeping Must Stop

After more than 15 years tutoring dyslexic and struggling readers one-on-one – watching kids light up when confusion clears and they finally read fluently – I'm done holding back.

I've poured my observations into this blog since 2010, only to face silence, blocks, and herd-like defensiveness from the "experts" in the Science of Reading (SoR) and structured literacy world. Parents are desperate, kids are suffering needless disengagement, and yet the echo chambers on Twitter/X rage on, protecting egos, products, and flawed dogmas. It's time to call it out plainly: We're creating "dysteachia" – preventable reading failure through poor instruction – and mislabeling it as incurable dyslexia. And the gatekeeping? It's a big disservice to every child who could thrive with simpler, common-sense fixes.

Evening News: The Truth About Reading—or the Truth About Misinformation?

 

When I saw the trailer for the documentary The Truth About Reading, I wasn’t surprised to see Faith Borkowsky and Emily Hanford featured prominently. That alone was enough for me to know: this film will likely perpetuate the same half-truths and misinformation that have plagued literacy discourse for years.

“Are men interested in literacy?” A tweet by Faith Borkowsky 16.2.2022

 

High Five Literacy@FaithBorkowsky·

Why aren’t more men following my Facebook High Five Literacy page?

Do men read? I hope so…

Are men interested in #literacy? It doesn’t look like it.

I’m sure every father wants to see his child reading. And I know male educators want their students to read.

I just don’t think enough men take an active role in advocating for better #reading instruction.

We need male role models for kids, and we need men involved with literacy initiatives.

Blocking for business reasons or due to delivery?

 

On 12.1.2021 I Tweeted the following:

‘Interesting find.

I just realised that one Gale Morrison @GaleMorrisonEd, Parent education advocate, has blocked me. Why do people block me? I believe I am a threat to their business.’

 

Rayyan, a 6 year-old, reading from my book

 

Sometime early this year, my friend N. POOLOHGASINGAM aka Huang Poh Lo, complained to me that his grandson Rayyan was unable to read in English despite all the coaching he had given Rayyan.

I then asked Poh Lo how he taught the sounds of a few consonants to Rayyan viz. b, c, f, m, t and s. He sounded all the letters with extraneous sounds – buh, kuh, fuh, muh, tuh and sir/sur. 

“The Truth About Reading” Is Missing Truths and Backstory by Nancy Bailey (Part 1)

 

Here is a post in Nancy Bailey’s blog. It is a comment on a trailer of an upcoming movie  “The Truth About Reading”.

Nancy says among other matters: 

Can Dyslexia Be Artificially Induced in School?

 

I saw the following link on a Tweet by Faith Borkowsky.

Here are a few extracts any my comments.

Ever since The New Illiterates was published back in 1973, we have known that the chief, and perhaps only cause of dyslexia among school children has been and still is the look-say, whole-word, or sight method of teaching reading. In that book I revealed the fact that the sight method was invented back in the 1830s by the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, the director of the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb. He had been using a sight, or whole-word method in teaching the deaf to read, by juxtaposing a word, such as cat, with the picture of a cat. And because the deaf were able to identify many simple words in this way, Gallaudet thought that the method could be adapted for use by normal children.

Common sense and teaching

 

 

I read an article a week ago. Here are a few extracts and my comments.

One sentence from the article that caught my eyes is: Once habits become ingrained they can be very hard to shift, even when we are presented with evidence that challenges them.

That statement reminds me of what Charlie Munger had said about how the human mind resembles the human egg. LINK.