alt.home.repair added. Best to reply to this one.


OT How old are you and how were you taught to read?

I heard a very interesting radio show tonight, and apparently the same
fight about how to teach reading, that was going on at least since 1951
is still going on.


When I was 5, in 1952, (and of course they'd been debating it at the
board of education for months or years before that), there was a contest
between what was then called "Word recognition" and phonetics. Later
these were known as whole word and phonics, and probably other names
too.

Word recognition won, by the time I started first grade, but our first
grade teacher, Miss Maxwell was 64 and entering her last year of
teaching. She was not inclined to learn something new (which she
probably had doubts about anyhow), so we learned phonetically.
Everyone of us could read before we left for Xmas vacation, including
the 2 girls who never knew the answer to questions. (and the one who
stuttered, though I don't really think the two are related.)


Since then, a 3rd choice has reared its head, 3 cueing systems, where
the reader tries to figure out the word from context: semantic,
syntactic and graphophonic cues. I don't know what those words mean.
On the radio they talked about the rest of the text, pictures, and
something else. Did any of you get taught with a 3 cueing system?