h experience with books and stories, are important underpinnings for children's success in learning to read. Dr. Adams states:"All children will benefit from and many children require systematic, direct instruction in the elements of the alphabetic code."How have educators responded to research?Since admitting fault is not an easy thing for anyone to do, most education professionals respond to research findings that advocate the teaching of intensivesystematic phonics with the following excuses: there isn't an illiteracy problem; we do teach phonics; no one method is best; English isn't phonetic; word callingisn't reading; the child isn't ready; the child has a reading disability; it's the parents fault; it's too much TV. But if we are to solve the problem of illiteracy inAmerica, we must stop making excuses and take immediate action to change the way reading is taught.In December of 1982, a survey of 1609 professors of reading in 300 graduate schools was conducted. When asked which reading authorities of all time, in theiropinion, had written the most significant, most worthy, "classic" studies in reading, the top three individuals on the list, in order, were Frank Smith, KennethGoodman and Edmund Huey, all well-known, vociferous, dedicated, dogmatic, enemies of early, intensive teaching of phonics. Frank Smith and KennethGoodman are two of today's most influential proponents of the "look and say" or as they would term it, "whole language" philosophy of teaching reading.San Diego State University Professor Patrick Groff recently reviewed 43 reading texts, all published in the1980's and used by teachers' colleges in training readingteachers, to see if they included the findings of researchers that the "code-emphasis" or phonics approach to teaching reading should be used. He found that noneof these books advocate phonics. In fact, only nine of these books inform teachers that there is current debate about if or when phonics should be ta...
