If information is the currency of democracy, how can any
illiterate Australian ever expect to be really free? Yet in Australia
today, 1 in 12 children cannot pass a basic year 3 national reading test. The
performance of Indigenous students is even more disturbing, where a quarter are
incapable of meeting basic reading standards in year three. The Australia
Council for Educational Research further documents 30 % of year 9 students
lacking in basic literacy skills.
For more than a decade the Reverend Bill Crews has run a
remarkable programme at the back of his Ashfield church for kids who can’t
read. When not feeding the working poor, counselling prostitutes or keeping
drug users alive, Bill has saved young lives in other ways.
Under the direction of Professor Kevin Wheldall from Macquarie University’s Special Education Unit, a
dedicated team has taught children how to read. Children from the inner west
are collected each day for a morning of intensive one to one reading
instruction.
The ‘pause, prompt and praise’ programme uses phonics
instruction.
One boy, after five years in the education system observed
at his first session, “Oh, it’s the black stuff you read!” Six months later
they are able to write and read a piece of poetry. Word recognition jumps 21
months, reading accuracy 16 months and spelling 12 months.
So when Bill came to see me as Education Minister two years
ago to set out his vision for a similar centre in Alexandria, I was all ears. Having seen the
liberating transformation his team had produced in the lives of many young
people, I told him the Commonwealth would commit $1 million to the project.
When an official later questioned where the programme might
ft, I replied, “Well. It’s a b …. y good job we weren’t running the Health
Department when Fleming turned up with penicillin”.
The real tragedy is that no teacher can teach what he/she
doesn’t know. Half the universities training teachers dedicate less than 5 % of
course time to reading. Too often that small component lacks scientific rigour,
producing teachers who then – through no fault of their own, are unable to
introduce students to the basics of reading.
Children passing from primary to high school barely literate
fail to fulfil their potential. They are later disproportionately represented
in unemployment queues, public housing and prisons.
Memorising the landscape of a word and guessing from context
might help, but it is not reading. Reading
requires letter and sound understanding – phonics.
Too often it is assumed that children from marginalised
disadvantage cannot learn. They can and do when educators believe in them. What
kids bring to school with them determines where they start. But what happens in
the classroom will determine how far they’ll go. Poor teaching compounds
disadvantage.
God bless Bill Crews, Professor Wheldall and their small
army of reading volunteers.
Source:
South Sydney Herald April 2007 – www.southsydneyherald.com.au