Several years ago. I took a leave of absence from the University of Minnesota to write a book about reading a professional book. I have been in Reading education for almost 25 years and I decided after that much time that I might have something to say about the subject. And so I took leave of Minneapolis then went to Solana Beach California where I was able to watch the whales go south of the Dolphins Frolic in the crest of the waves and had a marvelous time and I did write the book.When I returned to the University of Minnesota as is the tradition at a university, I wrote a letter to the president CP Tim McGraw and I thanked him for the opportunity to read among all the other things that I thanked him for the sabbatical leave. I thanked him for the opportunity to read because it is my very considered opinion that many teachers of reading in the schools are not particularly. Well read and I don't mean for example the first book of jogging or your erroneous zones are pulling your own strings or whatever but I mean a good dose of Factory in Dickens Carlisle Shakespeare escalus. What I'm saying is that I think the teachers of reading in the schools should look to the literature for those lines that are true for those lines but a good those lines but a beautiful so that the teaching of reading in the schools become something of eloquence becomes something of majesty becomes something a vision and HopeWhat I'm indicating is that schools are pedestrian and then dull in my view because in many instances we are so pedestrian and dull and so I would say at the outset it regarding the teaching of reading in the schools that I would hope that the ultimate goals of reading instruction in the schools would be clearly understood by all and that is at the ultimate objectives are much more literary. They are much more historical. They are much more aesthetic than they are to say skills oriented indeed. One of the tragedies that I see going on in schools across this great land is that we feel we perceive we think we hypothesize we conjecture we theorize that if we break reading instruction down in the schools to little bits and pieces of skill information a sound symbol correspondences basic phonics, if you wish that somewhere along the line of the children who are engaged in such Enterprises will be struck with reading fluency.As with Saul on the road to Damascus the fact of the matter is I don't believe that at all. I believe the children should be read with every single day. They should hear fluent reading. They should see connect the discourse indeed. One of the one of the observations that I can make with some degree of certitude. Is it one of the reasons why children have difficulty in learning to read and why they continue to have difficulty in learning to read in school is because they sit around and listen to one another read poorly all day long and teachers of reading a little children in the schools would be well-advised to read high for the stories in the basal readers and maybe a definition of basal reader would be appropriate here by basal b a s a l i mean the kinds of books that we use in the schools to teach children how to read but as contrasted with for example, those books that we would find in library and on the shelves of this Auditorium. So what I'm saying is when such books are used in school, but I stillEncourage teachers to read half of the selection or 1/3 of the selection or 2/3 of the selection as the children follow along. If for no other reason than to be done with the matter, the fact of the matter is that this business of poor reading goes on and on and on and insufferably on in the schools and it is no mystery to me that the children's eyes come up from the page and seeks to cease and tranquility and Requiem out the window because the birds always fly right side up and the trees always reach with that branches to All The Heavens things make sense out there when children see a jumble of print on a page and hear a cacophony of sound that is a very very distressing language activity indeed.Now to the issue at hand. As I indicated to you, I have been in Reading education for a long time and I believe off the looking at all of the information about the subject about reading most of the literature of what people have to say about the subject off to reviewing interminable data about the matter. I believe that's the single major variable in terms of success or lack of success in school type reading program is whether the child has or has not been read with at home. What I'm saying is without fear of too much contradiction. Children who are red with at home have little difficulty learning to read in school. I don't want to belabor these exceptions but let me indicate them to you. There are some children who have difficulty in learning to read in school, even if they have been read with at home because they have psychological emotional problems of a considerable degree. My own conjecture is At most psychological emotional problems of little children how much more the result of school failure then it's caused and the best therapy in my view for emotionally disturbed child is success in school learning. You don't need to tell children. Haha how good they are you don't need to tell them how important they are or to develop self Concepts through discussion just indicate to them and the end the insurer about they do learn regardless of what is learned in school and children will feel much better about themselves some children. They have difficulty in learning to read because of some physiological deficiencies. We think that these deficiencies of the eye of the year when the fact of the matter is that deficiencies of the year that is related to the Pathology of the year are much more critical in the morning to read process. Then let us say dysfunctions of the eye the eye has very little to do with with reading at all in spite of what your friendly optometrist my tell you the I simply transmit the signal. What reads if you'll pardon make is the auditory neural sensorimotor system, it means you're listening vocabulary. In other words. There isn't any such thing as silent reading their subvocalization that goes on all the time. So the child is not reading in a sense visually what the child is doing when the child read is listening. And so this function of the year is much more critical than a dysfunction of the eye but it is the secondary a physiological causation and Troublesome like the child who is absent from school a lot for different reasons each time that's difficult to control the type of child who comes to school and is inattentive because a child has been up half the night watching reruns of McHale's Navy that you can control all the child who come to school and is inattentive because the child has some type of us upper respiratory problems and spends all day going. All where's the other way? It is these kinds of incidental things that are very difficult for the school to control and I rather think an accumulation that these are the things that I very very critical children may have difficulty in learning to read in spite of the fact that they have been read with at home. If they have some neurological dysfunction and terms such as Aphasia. Dyslexia, strephosymbolia lesions and broke is convolutions in the like a very popular today, but when you sit down and talk to the pediatric neurologist the pediatric neurologist do not indicate these causation would say the child has a lesion in the occipital lobe area. It may very well affect visual memory. Now, it's a teaching problem. What I'm indicating is that the incidence of reading disability among neurologically impaired children may be no greater than the deficiencies in Reading in terms of neurologically sound children in my view the single major variable in terms of success or the lack of success. In school type reading program is whether the child has or has not been read with at home. Now. Why is being read with at home such a powerful variable in terms of success or lack of success in school type reading programs? Now since I have been in this room, there has been a very interesting neurological phenomenon that has been occurring and for the most part you've been completely unaware of it for the most part. Most of you during the times I have been talkin have been following me visually that is to say as I have just accumulated as I have moved about you are following me. Literally your eyes are working for your ears. Your eye is going to the source of the sound your eye is going to the origin of the utterance. Now that is a way a child learns his or her language. The I literally works for The Ear The Eye literally goes to the sauce of a sound now a child who has not been read with at home gets five or six years of visually following the sound five or six years of visually going to the source of the elements. Now that comes out day in school in September or October or November or whenever the first level teacher says boys and girls were going to learn to read now. I don't know how many do our parents know do I know how many of you are children? I mean teachers we're all children. I like those lines like that so sentimental and I don't know how many of you are are both but the fact of the matter is what I'm indicating is at a point in time the first level teacher says and their two things. I want to elaborate upon very briefly. The first one at a point in time. What I'm talkin about is retinas that is when we begin with the children in school. The fact of the matter is in my view that red and this has little or nothing to do with whether the children already the children are ready for anything. It's whether the teacher is ready. If the teacher is ready we stop if the teacher isn't ready we wait for reading is to appear somewhat like a crocus in Minnesota. What I'm indicating is the whole map. A Readiness is whether the teacher is ready. But one thing I can caution about very very directly and succinctly and that is the school does not have that much time to teach children to read within the confines of a school schedules are within the confines of the elementary school years time is very short indeed and one statement that I will make very very directly and that is the degrees of structure in a school tie program should be inversely proportional to the degrees of structure in the home life of the child meaning if children come to school psychologically depressed anxious afraid unable to follow directions unable to sustain attention to toss over a. Of time who come from homes that I in a sentence without schedule who come from homes that I bought on those that are chaotic that border on homes that may in fact be hostile towards School in my view. It does little good to duplicate. Those conditions in the school and then I'll go one step further and say that the major that the major that the basis of all learning in the schools discipline and discipline has little or nothing to do with punishing children or nailing them to the floor. The etymological derivation of the term discipline is from the Latin disciplina, which means instruction discipulis the 12 to follow what I'm indicating is but I think we make a grave mistake and saying that the school is going to adjust to the child which we've been saying since Carleton Washburne in whenever when in fact, I believe very seriously that the degrees of structure in the school should be inversely proportional to the degrees of structure or lack of structure in terms of the whole life of the children who come to the school to be served and indeed school should not count their success by the numbers of children who read fluently within the building because I hasten to assure you that most of those chill Would be reading fluently whether the school existed or not school should count their success by the numbers of children who learn to read who would not have learned to read had that being no school. This is the mark of the Excellence of an instructional soccer league. It is also the whale of its tragedy Why then is being read with at home such a powerful variable in terms of success or lack of success in school type programs. Now the context again at a point in time, the first level teacher says I notice I said the first level teacher because in many parts of the country as we move into the age of Aquarius, we are taking all of the grade-level designations off. I'm quite certain in some schools perhaps by 1985 only the children will know what grades are in we will hope that they are somewhere within the building within the greater Educational Park. It is a very interesting observation that I make in the end and let me also say that while I am a professor at the University of Minnesota, I generally spend a considerable portion of my time. I would say at least two or three mornings a week in a Title 1 School somewhere in the greater Metropolitan Twin Cities area of Minneapolis to st. Paul working with children who have difficulty in learning to read and I do not go to the school to get Because I have two real life itself. It just filled with all kinds of advice but most of us need is help until I go to the school and I try to help and I try to help by sitting down on one side of the desk with some children who have difficulty in learning to read sitting on the other and I attempt to teach them remembering what Plato said that those who dare to teach must never cease to learn. So I go to the school and we are building across these big huge giant monolithic schools. They look like inverted submarine as we tear down our neighborhood schools. That was named after Washington Lincoln Jefferson Hamilton and soon to come down. We'll be the ones named off of the early American poet fossil on Whittier Longfellow and in the South occasionally at the septic po which I think is rather unfortunate because I think if there's anything that is needed in American Education, it is a tradition. We need those schools because they represented something they represented a fine our in our development as a free people because from these schools came generation after generation of Americans and Sons and Daughters of immigrant Americans who have forged a republic on Parallel in the history of humankind and I wish we would let those schools alone and let them stand for what they represent in a very very fine hour and I'll development as a free people but was very uncomfortable for some reason. And so we tell them down and we build these giant monolithic thing where you walk up the ramp and then you walk over the moat and then you go through the air door and then you get inside and then the principal says, how do you like it? I think it's Nifty we can hold them off for at least a month from in here. No kid, no kid ever get in and then when we Billy's you school, we find out the children like to be in little places like underneath the sink or underneath the piano school kids have been making tents forever. So then we fill up the school with all of these little boxes with holes in them. So the children can get in and do what we want them to do. Not what they think the children want the hot Lee child psychologist at all. But anyways, I walk up the ramp and find the Greet you at the school. It says welcome. Welcome. Welcome to our school. You're always welcome to our school. Please report at once to the principal's office. And I generally do what I'm told bothering that which is immoral or illegal. That's all I go down to the principal's office and the school secretary is very very busy and finally gives me noticing and I say, my name is John Madden has been called to an emergency meeting down at the school board. I have to do with the pressure in the fire extinguishers. I can understand that you wouldn't want to lose your nozzle in the fire anything and so I didn't say to the school secretary. May I visit the first grade and the school? Secretary says Miss Manning. We have no first grade. We are completely ungraded. That means we don't have any grades. We just saw the fall together e and I say, oh that's very nice. I can understand that. What would you direct me to the general vicinity of the chronological age Sixers? Yes, she said they are down past the cafetorium and the gym tutorium complex. They are past the high-intensity individualized learning modules station area come by this afternoon and Jiminy pod-nah. Do you get to the boys toilet? Mr. Manning? You'll know you've missed it. I say well, I guess I can get one out of four. So I go out and I grabbed the first first but what grade are you in 3rd? They all know what grades are in seemingly. We are the only ones that are mystified by the process and I can assure you it will ever be done but now the case and point the child has not been read with at home. The child gets 5 years of practice and Visually following the sound the first grade teacher says boys and girls we're going to learn to read and I here's the rub his the great debate. What are we going to use? That is one of the children going to see Define icon octafonic. That is the question whether we're going to see a good ol healthy word like Flip or whether we're going to see you. Is it reads the boys in the boat or whether we're going to have the children tell us a story about the gerbil in other words, there's a big deal of Fiora and fuss and we hold our breath and some people even immolate themselves about the whole matter of what the child should see how we should teach the child to read in school when the fact of the matter is for the child who has not been read with at home who has had 5 years of practice in visually following the sound that child is going to do exactly what that child has been doing for the last five or six years and that is that child is visually going to look at the teacher and not at the print the child is not neurologically disposed to look at the print and other words and learning to speak the eye works for the year and learning to read it is the year that works to the eye and the difficulty with a practitioner in the lower primary grade. The teacher of first grade is it you cannot see inside the head of a child and you do not know whether or not the child is in fact paying attention with that listening. Neuro sensory motor system you sit at the first instructional a tie a controversy about what the child should see in a beginning reading program in school who has not been read with at home can be summed up very nicely by recalling the last lines of Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the Civil War Gone With the Wind when standing on the steps of Tara framed in the flames and 5 Atlanta Rhett Butler says frankly my dear and if you don't know what the last line is Osteo friendly procure school teacher the fact of the matter is it doesn't make any difference because the child visually goes to the sauce goes to the teacher and why should we expect anything other than that to occur when for 5 years you had that neurological dependence upon the ear and you're not going to dramatically alter that. Really because you put some funny squiggles on a flashcard. I'll make some ox on a chalkboard. I'll hold up a word that makes little or no sense at that point in time visually. Now, let's take the reverse. Let's take the children who have been read with at home. The little ones at the age of two or three sitting on a Mother's lap around a father's need. The parent is reading. Where is the child looking at the parent Auto? The job is looking at the book. The child is trying to determine by what legerdemain by what sorcery by what witchcraft are you able to read those lines with the light enrichment stall and night off tonight off tonight? The child brings the same book to be read over and over and over and over and over again. I can recall an incident of a grandmother who is near my home in New Brighton Minnesota, and she indicated to me that she said I told a child. She said I can't read it anymore because it's too hot and put it aside and some time went by and the child brought it back to the to the grandparents. It's cool. Now. It's all again. And he did to you read the story over and over and over again and some early evening. You are reading along with a child and you come across some lines that are visually distinct and that is a keyword. This story is when a boy wakes up in the morning and I know you can't see it all but it tells about a little boy whose mother and father tell him, you know, don't disturb us in the morning. Let us sleep in a little bit and all the things that the boy does remember not to disturb his mother and father which is a very very common occurrence, but he gets inquisitive and he goes into the closet and lo and behold he caused a big Ruckus by having all the blocks in the cupboard Falls whereupon of cost is Mother and Father awaken, but when you come to the page where the the the block actually fall if you can see the print, this is JD go to the bureau in stands on his toes. He grabs and pulls and pulls in the Box tip and is heavy and heaviest too heavy and your turn the page. And it says and falls over and crash bang Rumble trash and those words appear just as old black boy. They are like the rest of the prints on the page. They are visually this date and so some even you are reading along with your child sitting on your lap and almost all trade books. You're reading along with your child and pulls and the Box tips and his heavy and heavy is too heavy and you turn the page and the child says and falls over and crash bang Rumble crash and puts the words in exactly where they belong the child has memorized the story and at that moment you being not approvingly. You probably point of the word and you realize that your mother was wrong. You did make the right decision. You married good. You have parented a genius. What has your child learned at home? Very naturally. Your child has learned something that is fundamental to all reading instruction in the school's the child has learned to follow along and learning to read is no more difficult than learning to follow along to associate the oral language already known with his written counter pot. It's no more difficult than that. Now, they're awesome. Children, of course who do have difficulty in learning to read. I don't deny that and as a matter of fact depending upon where you are in this great Republic I can take you to someplace California the great San Joaquin Valley from Sacramento in the north to Indio in the South where the incidence of reading disability is very very high positive, Texas stock Audi, for example, any major American city in this country New Orleans Boston, New York Pittsburgh Memphis Miami where the incidence of reading disability is alarmingly critically almost Amara Lehi. I can take you to some other parts of this country where the incidence of reading disability is relatively low that is to say most of the children learn to read but compared to these so reading disability is not uniformly distributed in the school. And may I say that the great challenges of reading instruction in the schools still ID for us? And I think it is very very tragic that I see in the schools as I work with my young people at the University as I say to them now when you get out into the schools and when you get to teaching and it stops about there because many of these fine young people there are no jobs for these young people. There are no places for them to go with that Talent. There are no places for them to be with the idealism and the hope and I think it's very tragic because my own observation is very very clear on this matter that if some children are to survive in school that all they need the resources and the talent and the encouragement. And the wisdom of a sensitive compassionate teacher all day long and alone if they are to survive within the context of the school, so I don't know what we're talking about when we're talking about that. There is no room for the at the end because the race and sooner or later. We'll have to put our priorities in order but I shan't extend my remarks in that regard. This is not the forum for it. So you have them on entrance to school you really have two kinds of youngsters. You have the kind of youngster who has been read with at home and is going to learn to read in spite of what the school does despite what the school does and sometimes to spike with the school does and this kid is going to learn to read and there isn't anything to school can do to prevent it from school. So help me to try awfully hard and then on the other hand you got some children who come to school and tragically from the very very first day that they are in school. They are in considerable language Linguistics and reading this dress and it is the business of improving the capabilities of the ladder for which the school most critically exist in terms of skills instruction. Now, I believe that the school can overcome the skill problems that children have but that's something else that's popping around in there something that is a little bit less tangible something that is a little bit more. Aetherium something that is a little bit more difficult to Define. And that is the value of it all when children have been read with at home. They learn to value. My mother learns to read my mother what my mother read my father reads. I want to learn how to read I want to read to my baby brother. I want to read to my baby sister or my grandmother or whatever. What I'm indicating is that when children are engaged in Reading with that parents. They learn not only an essential skill of associating speech and print but more deeply in vibrantly what they learn is a Valium and that value lost a lifetime. What are the observation and then I will close and that is I don't believe I'm an offer a free basal reading programs that are used in the schools. But I do not believe children become fluent readers by basal reading programs in the school's indeed. I would argue that children learn more about reading by what they read outside of school than ever by what they read inside of school, which clause is one of the tragedies that we have in dealing with children or young adults at the secondary school level because they haven't had seven or eight years a meaningful practice outside of school. They do not choose reading as a ledger a recreational activity and therein lies the critical list of dealing with that particular concern, but what I'm saying is I don't think children learn to read in school fluently by requiring a book report. The only time for example that I can recall that I have a read a book was because I was told as a sophomore in a Dominican college that I shouldn't read a book because it was on the index. A list of forbidden books, of course that take my appetite. I'm more than anything I am so I had to go out and secure a copy and I took it home to my attic room leafing through it looking for what the high school kids called the weather on any good pot the word any in the book which was Machiavelli's the prince it was about economics and politics and so my notion of how a book qualified to get on the list was completely erroneous respect and this is the clothes that children become fluent readers and that ultimately and hopefully and happily they make career decisions based upon their interest and predilections and propensities and talents not because of school type programs, but rather because of significant other I had the privilege of talking with joy Rockland a noted Child author recently in Atlanta. She is an anthropologist by profession and offer by Patient and application and she was talking about children who read as she said in her studies always there was mention of a mother or father who read that is at the child was encouraged by a parent who read a parent who share what was red and I feel very strongly in a similar vein. I do not think we get children to read a by trying to develop well-balanced readers when the fact of the matter is is not a well-balanced reader in this room. You're all odd some of you like books of historical romance some like books of Science Fiction some as I like biographies like a boy drink and otherwise, we all have these different interest and taste and he's a vital to the well-being of a democratic people and they should be encouraged in school not discourage the search for X in the Democratic school system is a search for diversity for individuality for uniqueness a paste and interest this will keep us strong. And so what I'm saying at the close Is that I rather suspect that the way fluid reading is developed is by giving significance to the interest of the children in school and out of school by knowing for example, that a child is interested in Wales to secure a book from the local library off in the school library in about whales and then bring it to the child and say, you know Mary I was down at the library last night or this afternoon and I was thinking about you fact that you were down at the library and you were thinking about Mary when she was not in your immediate physical presence will be interpreted by Mary as a major social miracle and the fact that you thought enough about the child to bring home the book I can assure you the child will get through that book One Way Or t'other and I rather suspect very strongly that that is how fluent he's a development that is how it tastes are encouraged that is how we feel about those things that we are interested in.