{"id":77,"date":"2026-04-07T02:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/?p=77"},"modified":"2026-04-07T02:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T02:16:11","slug":"there-is-no-science-of-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/2026\/04\/07\/there-is-no-science-of-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"There Is No \u201cScience of Reading\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dianeravitch.net\/2026\/04\/02\/there-is-no-science-of-reading\/\">Diane Ravitch<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Given the fact that about half the states have now mandated that teachers teach \u201cthe science of reading,\u201d it seems to be a good time to repost what I wrote on November 1, 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Some things never change.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote:<\/p>\n<p>One of my grandsons sent me an article about the national rush to mandate \u201cthe science of reading,\u201d and it caused me to explain briefly (without boring him) the background of the latest panacea.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t tell him the history of the \u201creading wars,\u201d which I researched and wrote about in Left Back (2000). I didn\u2019t tell him that reading instruction has swung back and forth between the phonetic method and the \u201cwhole word\u201d method since the introduction of public schooling in the first quarter of the 19th century. Horace Mann opposed phonics. But the popular McGuffey readers of that century were phonetic and included examples of good literature.<\/p>\n<p>In 1930, the Dick-and-Jane readers were introduced, and they swept the country. Unlike the McGuffey readers, they featured pictures of children (white and suburban), they used simple words that could be easily recognized, and they were bright and colorful. By the 1950s, Dick and Jane style readers were used in about 80% of American schools. They relied on the whole word method, also known as look-say. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Diane Ravitch: Given the fact that about half the states have now mandated that teachers teach \u201cthe science of reading,\u201d it seems to be a good time to repost what I wrote on November 1, 2023. Some things never change. I wrote: One of my grandsons sent me an article about the national rush to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedso.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}