tion on earth.Rudolf Flesch, author of "Why Johnny Can't Read," wrote the following in a letter to his daughter in 1955, after teaching his grandson to read:"Since I started to work with Johnny, I have looked into this whole reading business. I worked my way through a mountain of books and articles on the subject, Italked to dozens of people, and I spent many hours in classrooms, watching what was going on.What I found is absolutely fantastic. The teaching of reading -- all over the United States, in all the schools, in all the textbooks -- is totally wrong and flies in theface of all logic and common sense. Johnny couldn't read until half a year ago for the simple reason that nobody ever showed him how."Time magazine called his book "the outstanding educational event of that year" and suggested that he represented "the devil in the flesch" to the educationestablishment.There is an answer to "why Johnny can't read," but the answer is tough medicine to swallow. It requires education professionals, who for years have beenengaged in a form of education malpractice, to admit that the methods of teaching reading they have vigorously advocated and staunchly defended ever since the1930's are dead wrong.If we are to seriously reverse the increasing number of illiterate adults in America and prevent the problem of illiteracy, we must swallow the medicine, as quicklyas possible, and reject the instructional methods that have resulted in the widespread illiteracy we have today.Two ways to teach readingHistorically, all American school children were taught to read. Teachers never considered that a child "could not" be taught to read, and remedial reading wasunheard of. In fact, the first remedial reading clinic opened in 1930, soon after the results of the "look and say" (the so-called "Dick and Jane" program) readingmethods were beginning to be felt.Up until the early part of the 20th century, children were taught to read by first learning the alp...
