So were the reading wars merely a misunderstanding...?
In 1886 James Cattle discovered that words could be read faster than individual letters. So, if we read words faster than letters why bother with the letters? Why bother with the alphabet, and why bother with phonics? Just concentrate on learning words...
This dovetailed beautifully with Gestalt theory (Wertheimer, 1924) which maintained behaviour was not determined by its individual elements but that, ‘the part processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole…’
So, off education went with flashcards, basal readers that repeated words regularly, whole word memorisation, psycholinguistic guessing, contextual guessing, triple cueing, mixed methods, four searchlights, whole language, balanced literacy and meaning emphasis instruction.
No-one disagreed that recognising a whole word instantly was not a vital component of developing reading fluency, or that using contextual cues to guess unknown vocabulary could be a useful strategy, or that reading for meaning was the point of reading,...
...or that immersion in literature and a love of reading were not important ideals, or even that many children can develop their reading skills in this way. Or that some children 'get' reading more quickly and some are slower.
It was the timing that was the issue. Cattell's experiments were done on fluent readers not emergent readers. The conclusion should have been: when readers are fluent, they can recognise words more quickly than individual letters.
And to trigger this word superiority effect (Reicher, 1969) they need to master the alphabetic principle (Rayner et al., 2012). And the most efficient method of ensuring that ALL children master the principle is systematic code-based instruction (Chall, 1967).
Meaning-based instruction will work for some, but for struggling readers it will exacerbate that struggle (Rayner et al., 2012) and encourage them to read the way poor readers read: by guessing (Presley, 2006).
Systematic code-emphasis instruction does not teach children how to read, or read fluently or comprehend what they read or love literature. It teaches them, in the most effective way we know, how to master the alphabetic principle that enables them to recognise a word instantly.
Nothing more. Nothing less. And it is worth noting that children who can't read fluently before the age of 9 seldom catch up (Torgesen et al., 2001). There should never have been a war. It was all a misunderstanding...?
