A recent LinkedIn exchange revealed a troubling mindset in education debates. When I shared that teaching letter names helps children decode irregular words like ceiling, giraffe, or bee, a commentator dismissed me with sarcasm: “Don’t look at science. Make stuff up instead.”
I have listened to both David Boulton and Andrew Johnson several times and must say that both of them are a wealth of knowledge but both of them are like the human egg in that they are not receptive to things that are contrary to what they have learned.
It was David who blocked me on LinkedIn in 2015 when I told him that his two recommended videos would cause kids to disengage from learning to read. LINK.
Andrew Johnson cut me off stating I don’t have the credentials to discuss with him. He asked me for research reports to support my findings that phonological awareness deficit is not the cause of dyslexia. He continually asked me for evidence.
Here is Andrew Johnson's cocked-up view on phonics. LINK
Here are further
excerpts from the discussion between David and Andrew and my comments. LINK
Today, 29.7.23, again there were a few tweets debating whether to teach letter names or not.
WARNING: These are debates by adults, just in case you think they are by kids.
EBLI tweeted followed by the tweets below which are self explanatory.
High Five Literacy@FaithBorkowsky
This is why delaying letter names makes sense.
Heidi Jane @DroppinKnwldge
Actually research shows letter names are important and can actually facilitate letter sound learning. Many letters like the one shown, have the sound in the letter name.
High Five Literacy @FaithBorkowsky
And many don’t. From my experience, having worked with hundreds of kids over the last 37 yrs, struggling readers mix up letter names and sounds and continue to do so for a while. For typical readers, it doesn’t matter.
From the above tweet it is obvious that Faith is arguing for argument sake. This is the problem with educators on Twitter. They will never back away and admit that they had not seen it from the other party’s viewpoint. The tweets continue:
John Walker, in his weblog had a post in June 2019 titled ‘Advocating the teaching of letter names to children just entering school is crass’.
You may read the whole post here.
https://theliteracyblog.com/2019/06/24/advocating-the-teaching-of-letter-names-to-children-just-entering-school-is-crass/
Why would any sane person call teaching letter names to children just entering school as crass?
