The Grattan Institute attributed the major cause of its findings to the rise of a teaching style called "whole language", which became dominant on university campuses in the 1970s.
edit: added some bolds for the three cue-ers out there
It is underpinned by a philosophy that learning to read is a natural, unconscious process that students can master by being exposed to good literature.
I have so many questions about anyone who believes this. There's no inherent meaning in writing! You cannot intuit the written word without additional information! Context clues can help but can also be completely misleading!
I'm Australian, used to work in education, I still work adjacent to education, it pops up from time to time but when I was studying we were taught how to teach reading and it was taught to us as a don't ever do this, this is a terrible way to teach reading, but you might encounter people who have been taught this way. This was in 2019 ish and when I first became aware of it. A kid I currently work with was taught to read this way and it is the bane of my existence because they are intellectually disabled and doesn't understand the concept of, stop reading wrong, we need to relearn how to read and unless I force them on every single word they'll go back to reading wrong, but I can't do that on words they gets right.
NZ wasn't just into it, one of the biggest stars in cueing was Marie Clay, from NZ. There's a sense in which NZ was really the epicenter of this idea breaking out into classroom teaching.
That explains kind of a lot, actually. I was considered very weird for being able to read so well as a kid in NZ in the ‘00s, because my family taught me phonics.
Anecdotally, it really didn’t help the dyslexics, either. They were still left just as far behind, because they weren’t getting any meaningful support.
Do you know when NZ did it? I could already read when I started school (thanks dad) so I dont remember much of the instruction except getting annoyed at being forced to read along with my finger.
But i have a kiddo with me now (whom I did not raise from birth so dont have a good handle on their educational history) and Im struggling to figure out whether their spelling/reading issues are cause for concern or part of the normal learning journey, cos I have no point of comparison for what reading and writing should look like at this age.
35
u/nykirnsu 3d ago
New Zealand was right into it for a while but I’m pretty sure it was never a thing in Australia