ABSTRACT
Some myths leave people cold; others give rise to acrimonious debate. One of the most acrimonious and long-standing of all is the debate –if what see can actually be called a debate–about how children can best learn to read: the so-called Reading Wars. There is a comparable war in mathematics/arithmetic, which has been raging in the United States since the 1980s; this time between the exponents of the explicit approach to learning maths and realistic methods. What’s more, it’s a war that has also flared up in other parts of the world; for example, since the turn of the century, the Netherlands has also been engaged in its own version of the same conflict: the rekenoorlogen. The emphasis placed by supporters of the global method on reading pleasure and reading motivation is certainly worthy of consideration and in certain circumstances can enhance the effectiveness–or at least the enjoyment–of the phonics method.
