Let's Do the Numbers
There is a radio broadcast on the stock market that always has a segment titled, "Now let's do the numbers."
That sentence kept going round in my head as I listened to a lecture on reading education. It focused on the idea that classroom teachers can, and must, meet the needs of each individual child.
How important is this idea? Very!
How idealistic is it? Very!
How realistic is it? Now the answer changes. Despite being wonderful and desirable, there is no way for this goal to be met in current classroom instruction.
Why? Well let's do the numbers.
Reading is the area that takes up the largest amount of time in the first three grades. So let's be more than generous and say that three full hours are spent in this critical area. That's 180 minutes. Now let's assume there 25 children in the class (although many classes are larger).
Let's assume further that the teacher is a super-human dynamo and has arranged to spend only 30 of those minutes in group instruction (focused on activities such as handing out papers, reviewing previous assignments, giving new assignments and so on). Every other minute --without taking even taking a few seconds to pause--is spent in one-to-one teaching.
How much time does that give each student? The answer---
six minutes!
Now remember, we have been extremely liberal is allocating three hours each day to reading and in having the teacher not waste one second of time. Those are not realistic conditions. Under real classroom conditions, the actual time might be one to two minutes. But even if it were as much as six minutes, it is obvious that group instruction can never offer the one-to-one instruction time that so many children need in order to progress in reading.
Of course, some children--probably in the range of 40-50%--are doing fine because they just "are like sponges." They find reading to be a breeze and they charge ahead with little need for support. But for a comparably large group, that is not the case. They need careful, steady guidance. When this guidance is provided, they soar and reading blossoms. Without this guidance, they become mired in failure and hopelessness.
It may be comforting to maintain that teachers via the group setting can meet the individual needs of every child. That view, however, is a myth that actually works to perpetuate academic problems. If children are to be helped, that myth must be abandoned and in its place, we must begin to provide children with the situations they need to succeed.
Hopefully schools will one day dramatically change and give children the support they need. Until that happens, parents must fill the gap.
That is how Phonics Plus Five came into existence. It was designed to provide parents with all the tools, content and techniques they need to bring their children to total mastery of reading and writing. In place of unrealistic dreams, it offers the reality of success.
