ABSTRACT
On page 123 of his recent best-selling book Why Johnny Cant Read (11), Rudolf Flesch makes the following statement:
There are only two kinds of experts worth listening to when it comes to reading: linguists and psychologists.
Flesch takes pains to give the impression that he is extremely suspicious of educators, at least educators who have done research on methods of teaching reading, for these are presented as being engaged in a conspiracy to “conceal… the true facts” (p. 61), even (he implies) to conceal or ignore the results of their own research studies (p. 68). Educators who have lent their names to series of readers used in elementary schools, or who teach teachers how to teach reading, are especially not to be trusted, Flesch would have us believe.