Curriculum Benchmarks: Break It Down, Don’t Dumb It Down

COVID-19 accelerated the decline of US standardized test scores. The slow descent suddenly felt like falling off a cliff.

Concerns about declining standards are not new, however. In 1955 Rudolf Flesch wrote Why Johnny Can’t Read, a book that criticized the “whole-word” method of reading and became a bestseller for 37 weeks in a row. Since then there have been numerous iterations of the “Reading Wars,” debates about the best ways to teach reading.

Why Johnny Can’t Read predates Emmanuel Christian School by 17 years. The “Reading Wars” have played an important background role in Emmanuel’s history. And we land on the phonetic side of that debate. Phonics is the best way to teach reading because English is a phonetic language. Phonics might not work for Chinese or have limits in hieroglyphics, but it works for English because of the nature of our language.

So committed are we to phonics that the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) of which we are a member requires instruction in phonics through 2nd grade for accreditation. When it comes to the Reading Wars, our flag is firmly planted.

But there are many different phonics-based curriculums, and we are moving toward Memoria Press. Why this one?

The starting point of literature is reading. The starting point of reading is phonics. The starting point of phonics is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the realization that letters correspond to sounds. This is a key benchmark in knowing when a child may be ready to learn to read (different children demonstrate readiness at unique times and ages). And it can be very damaging to try to force reading before a child is ready.

Let me give an example. Girls, on the whole, are prepared to start formal learning earlier than boys. This is simply a general reality (and a difference in biological sex our society should stop ignoring as we lament the rise in diagnosing ADHD/ADD disproportionally in boys). But for various social and cultural reasons, many boys are made to start formal education too soon. And as they start before they are ready, they struggle. This struggle leads many boys to internalize the idea they are bad at school or even worse that they are unintelligent (see Leonard Sax, Boys Adrift).

What starts roughly becomes catastrophic as students transition to logic school (middle school). This is especially true in public schools, where students are passed on to the next grade even when they have not mastered the foundational skills. We talk about the three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) for a reason. These are the foundational academic skills required to move higher in any subject. When the foundation is not built, but students are pushed on, the educational structure cracks.

This is why students must start at the beginning, especially in phonics. And the beginning of phonics, broken down to its most basic element, is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness can be cultivated and developed. Doing so helps students start at the beginning, and build a solid foundation for further learning.

Memoria Press starts at the beginning, with phonemic awareness in Junior K. It then moves rapidly, and students are reading by their fourth lesson in K5. Students who enrolled in Junior K start with a leg up; students who did not are older and thus able to catch on more quickly. This approach to teaching phonics breaks it down without dumbing it down.

However, the goal of phonics is not phonics. The goal of phonics is reading and writing. Here too, Memoria offers an excellent selection of children’s literature, leading up to the Great Books as students mature. We don’t want students reading about great ideas and literature, we want them to read great ideas and literature. We want them to write about great ideas so they can write their own great ideas.

But this all starts with reading. Reading begins with phonics. And phonics starts with phonemic awareness. Breaking it down is the only way to avoid dumbing it down. A student who learns to associate “a” with “ah” will eventually associate Shakespeare with plays, James Madison with the Constitution, and John the Beloved with Revelation.