I read "Why Our Children Can't Read" and found it to be well written and extremely informative. I wish all teachers, especially those teaching the primary grades were required to read it. I found the part about the history of written language facinating. Ms. McGuinness' book clearly tells why the whole language and phonics methods of teaching reading simply do not work, and recommends systems which have been proven to work.

And that way is phonetically. Humans beings don't posess the memory required to memorize every word as a separate shape.

And there are only two kinds of reading students -- those who can figure out the phonetic rules on their own, and those who can't. Most people can't, so they have to be taught how to connect the sounds to the letters explicitly.

Diane McGuiness assembles a mound of evidence to prove these two points, and shows you how reading in English should be taught. She overstates her case a bit, and her program is not as novel as she makes it sound (on that, see below). But she is fundamentally correct on the main issues -- we learn to read by learning how the way written language turns sounds into letter sequences, and for the vast majority of children, reading instruction is successful ONLY to the extent it EXPLICITLY teaches those sound-written form connections. In other words, only phonics works.

I was one of the children who couldn't figure out the rules on his own, but I was lucky. My mother found out I was having trouble learning to read, and taught me herself, based on the what she could remember of her own phonics based first grade instruction. It worked, and McGuiness's program is an improved version of what my mother used with me.

What's sad is that, as Jeanne S. Chall showed in LEARNING TO READ: THE GREAT DEBATE, ALL the evidence has always supported phonetic instruction versus 'whole word' methods, but the teacher's colleges teach the 'whole word' method almost exclusively. I don't know whether this is because they're ignorant, or because they actively wish to discourage reading, but I do know that if your children are taught McGuinness's way, or with Roberta Pournelle (Mrs. Jerry Pournelle)'s computer reading program, there is a 95% or better chance they will learn to read easily and well. If they are taught from Rudolf Flesch's WHY JOHNNY CAN'T READ, there's at least a 75% chance they will learn to read easily and well. If taught using whole word methods, there's at best a 40% chance they'll learn to read -- and the ones who do will be the ones who figure out phonics on their own.

The choice is yours, but if I were currently teaching reading the methods I'd use would be McGuiness's for instruction out of books or Mrs. Pournelle's for computer-based instruction. They work.

Hello?...educators...anybody READ MUCH? I do and this is what I picked for fun one night...it changed my life! With 2 college-age kids I thought I was done with "school daze." Wrong. After reading this book non-stop, I immediately signed up & trained in Phono-Graphix & now volunteer teaching 16-18 year olds (who can barely read) what they should have been taught in 1st grade...and it's WORKING!!! I'm also starting teen literacy groups where kids mentor kids in reading (yes, it's that good that even kids can teach it -kinda makes you want to cry), and training private tutors and public school teachers. I can only say "read it" but don't weep, join the Reading Revolution & make a difference in someone's life, maybe even your own--by b r EA k i NG TH e WR i TT EN c o DE...it's easy with the info Diane gives.