ABSTRACT
In their March, 2002 Scientific American article entitled “How Should Reading Be Taught?,” authors Keith Rayner, Barbara R. Foorman, Charles A. Perfetti, David Pesetsky, and Mark S. Seidenberg lamented that student teachers are not receiving proper instruction in “the vast research in linguistics and psychology that bears on reading” (p. 91). They argued that, if the education community provided student teachers with a “modern, high-quality course on phonics,” classroom teachers would then “not have to follow scripted programs or rely on formulaic workbooks” (p. 91). Reiterating that “reading must be grounded in a firm understanding of the connections between letters and sounds,” and that “youngsters who are directly taught phonics become better at reading, spelling and comprehension,” they concluded that “educators who deny this reality are neglecting decades of research” and that “they are also neglecting the needs of their students” (p. 91).
