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Dr. Jordan Peterson on Teaching Reading

By Learning-Activist on March 29, 2023 in Adult, Children of the Code, Magic Ladder, Mission of Education, science of reading, Technology for Learning

This clip begins with Dr. Peterson suggesting that motivating kids to learn to read is key to improving our educational and societal improvement efforts. He then proceeds to provide an overview of the conventional (Science of Reading) model of teaching reading. The clip ends with the prescient statement: “if the faculties of education were doing their job they would have produced technology to solve the problem for virtually every child”.

During his overview of reading instruction, Dr. Peterson asserts that we must teach letter combinations as the basis for sounding out syllables and words. He goes on to say that children must intensely massively practice intrinsically uninteresting automatization exercises in order to “get them to the point they can read for content”.

He is quite right to say that reading for content – reading for comprehensive meanings – requires machine-like reflexive responses to the letter-sound-spelling patterns in words. However, his assertion that we must use abstract letter-sound-spelling instruction to train such pattern recognition reflexes, is false. This is the same assumption the “Science of Reading” revolves around. It’s wrong.

Abstract pattern recognition training is not a necessary prerequisite to learning to read, it is a consequence of having to learn to read in a static media environment. We only need to pre-train brains to reflexively respond to letter-sound-spelling patterns if the words used to learn to read with are static, inert, and unable to support learners’ on-the-fly learning-to-read needs. It was understandable in the paper-based world of 500 years ago, or even 50 years ago, but today this assumption is the single greatest impediment to our progress in reading.

In the age of inexpensive ubiquitous devices, online access, and ever greater AI, it is inevitable that the future of learning to read will be facilitated (as Dr. Peterson wisely suggests) by smart technology that can individualize teaching reading. Rather than offline and in prep for later reading, inevitably technology will teach and support reading in the real-time live flow of reading. Once the words a learner encounters are their own reading tutors, the need for “intensely massive automatization training of intrinsically uninteresting letter-sound patterns” will go into the dustbin of history.

So, Dr. Peterson, the obstacle to your lament that this should have been solved long ago with technology, is the paradigm inertia you perpetuate in the way you conceptualize the process of teaching reading.

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It starts with recognizing the fundamental, profound, and capital value of ‘stewarding the health of our children’s learning.’

“I agree. I think everything points in that direction. I think you want to get to a basic set of principles and this is clearly it.” – Dr. James J. Heckman Recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Is there an educational mission that trumps, that is more important than “stewarding the health of our children’s learning”?

“No when put that way”. Dr. Grover (Russ) Whitehurst 2002-2008 Director of the Institute of Education Sciences and Assistant Secretary of Education with the U.S. Department of Education.

Ultimately what’s going to shift the behavior of the country over the long-term is understanding how fundamental this [healthy learning] is to everybody through the economic channel. …We must come up with a way of describing, measuring, and supporting the health of children’s learning. It is the unhealthy learning environments that are the problem.

Yes, that’s the message. That’s the message you’ve got to get across. Arthur Rolnick Senior V.P. and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and Associate Economist with the Federal Open Market Committee.

It’s not that somebody ‘knows’ the current science, because the current science might be wrong. But it’s that somebody knows how to learn about new science, and adapt. It’s also how they learn to adapt to workplaces… how to learn to do something that they had never even thought about doing when they were in school. That’s the key element. Dr. Eric Hanushek Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

So then the fundamental intention of our education system must be to use knowledge, skills and experience not just as the end, but as the means through which we’re exercising how well someone is able to participate and become self-extending in learning what they need to learn when they need to learn it.

Precisely.

The Institute for the Study and Prevention of ACQUIRED Learning Disabilities.

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“The most powerful professional development experience I have ever had. This was truly an awakening for me! – Julie Colley Lowery, Education Specialist, Alabama State Department of Education, Special Education Services

“A Mind-Blowing Way to View Learning. While many of us have observed this effect on an intuitive level, it took writer, researcher, and learning activist David Boulton to express the problem of incomplete learning in terms of its devastating effect on kids.” – Patricia Kokinos at ChangeTheSchools.com

“You made a wonderful contribution. The topics have stimulated classroom discussions. We are extremely pleased with the impact made in our community. ALL the comments heard from the registration people, people in our classes this week, table discussion leaders etc. have been positive. You are great. The BIG picture was outstandingly FINE!” – Linda Koehler, Professor of Special Education, University of Central Missouri

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