My Emile Zola tour! See you at one of these?

I'm doing various events over the next few months to talk about 'The Disappearance of Emile Zola, love, literature and the Dreyfus Case' published by Faber and Faber.

February 8 Goldsmiths, University of London

February 13 Conway Hall, London - arranged by Newham Books (Sold out)

February 21 Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham

February 23 Bookseller Crow, Crystal Palace, London

February 27 Tabernacle, West London, 5 x 15

February 28 Jewish Book Week, London

March 1 Festival of Idea, Bristol

March 10 Ways with Words, Keswick

March 15 Muswell Hill Bookshop, London, 6.30

March 22 Bookmarks Bookshop, London, 6.30

March 28 Oxford Literature Festival, Oxford

April 21 Cambridge WordFest,  Cambridge

April 24 Prospect (magazine) Book Club

May 4 Shakespeare & Co Bookshop, Paris

May 12 Institut Français (French Institute) London

May 24 Charleston Literature Festival

May 25 Bath Literature Festival

May 27 Hay Literary Festival

June 4 Stoke Newington Literature Festival, London

June 15 York Festival of Ideas, York

"Look-and-guess"? That's not the 'alternative' to universal, systematic, synthetic phonics teaching!

Strong advocates of universal systematic synthetic phonics teaching (what is in place in English schools at the moment) will buttress their case by typifying what others do or have done as inviting the children to 'look and guess', and/or 'look at the picture and guess the word.' This is, in short a lie. It's not what the opposing argument claims.

This use of the word 'guessing' is overcharged. Let's leave to one side the 'words and picture' example for the moment. The word 'context' can mean a variety of things including: the underlying grammar of a sentence - which children will know; it can mean the underlying and implied semantics (meaning) of the sentence as implied by, say, the opening two or three words.

It's very difficult (impossible?) to tell whether a child, at exactly the moment when reading a phonically regular text is using which of these three elements to read-for-meaning: phonics, semantics, syntax. So, take one of the phonics schemes. Ask a child to read it. It may well be that the child will use all three of these methods in different combinations at different times.

It's a great irony. The phonics schemes are trying very hard to make their texts fun and enjoyable. They've employed the great Julia Donaldson, for example. The irony is that the more fun and enjoyable they are, the more a child will want to read for meaning and you can't stop the child doing that. If you want to only teach the alphabetic principle, then forget the enjoyment bit! Just do word lists, blending, nonsense words. That's the abstract way. But of course the phonics schemes writers and devisers know that that's not possible because of young children's motivation. So they mix 'alphabetic principle' with semantics - and by virtue of the sentences being coherent and cohesive - with syntax too.

It's a triumph of mixed methods! Which is where we all started from - in my case 'The Beacon Readers' devised in the 1920s, still going strong in the 1940s/1950s which strongly advocated 'mixed methods'.

17% of children good at phonics but not good at reading? How come?

Here are some raw stats about the present year 3 children in state schools in England:


At the end of Year 1, 91% of those children reached expected level in the Phonics Screening Check.

At the end of Year 2, 74% of those children reached expected level in Reading.


In other words, 17% of the cohort were good at phonics but not good enough at reading.

Really? Why or how could that possibly happen? Surely phonics helps you to read. Well not for that 17%.

(Note: some people from the phonics school of teaching-to-read are claiming that it's bad phonics teaching that is holding children back. Really? Surely that 17% got very good phonics teaching because they reached the expected level. Only 9% of the cohort didn't reach the expected level. )



So is the fact that 26% of children didn't reach the expected level a problem? Is the fact that 17% of children were good at phonics but not good at Reading a problem?


Well, apparently it's not a problem because no government minister, no national newspaper is making a fuss about it.

I suggest it's a massive problem and it's to do with whether children get enough opportunity to read for pleasure, to read widely and often, to talk about the books they are reading.

Here's the link to my Dear Justine Greening article today:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jan/31/justine-greening-literacy-schools-phonics-teaching

Here's Professor Stephen Krashen's reply to my article in the Guardian:


Michael Rosen explains the difference between a phonics test and a reading test ("Dear Justine Greening, whatever happened to ‘eradicating illiteracy’? Jan. 31). In a phonics tests, children pronounce words presented to them in a list. In a reading test, children have to understand what they read.
Of great interest is the consistent finding that heavy phonics training only helps children do better on phonics tests. It has no impact on reading tests. Research also tells us that the best way to get better on reading tests is reading: The best predictor of reading achievement, in study after study, is the amount of recreational reading children have done.
The problem is not insufficient phonics teaching, as some claim. It is insufficient access to books. For many children of poverty, their only source of books is the library. Research also tells us that better libraries are associated with better reading test scores. The implication is obvious: Invest in libraries and librarians, not in phonics tests.
Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California


original article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jan/31/justine-greening-literacy-schools-phonics-teaching

Sources:
Impact of phonics on tests.
Harris, A. and Serwer, B. 1966. The CRAFT Project: Instructional time in reading research. The Reading Research Quarterly 2: 37-57.
Garan, E. (2001). Beyond the smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan 82, no. 7 (March), 500-506.
Garan, E. (2002) Resisting Reading Mandates. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Krashen, S. 2009. Does intensive decoding instruction contribute to reading comprehension? Knowledge Quest 37 (4): 72-74.
Pleasure reading.
McQuillan, J. (1998). The literacy crisis: False claims and real solutions. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Libraries Unlimited.
Libraries.
Krashen, S., Lee, S.Y. and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is the library important? Multivariate studies at the national and international level. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1): 26-36.
Lance, K. (1994). The impact of school library media centers on academic achievement. In C. Kuhlthau (Ed.) School Library Media Annual, vol. 12. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 188-19

Closing the US borders 1939, 2017

In 1939, my father's American cousin, Olga, (who I met several times) applied to the US to get her uncle out of France before the Nazis invaded. I discovered this online. There is no information on whether she succeeded. As he (and his wife and brother) didn't go to the US I suspect (but can't prove) that he was turned down. Her uncle (ie my father's uncle) was deported to Auschwitz.

in 2017 Trump is closing the borders to people who are at as great a risk of death as my father's uncle.

1898 - scapegoating a minority - and the alternative.

At another time (1898) in different circumstances, Emile Zola was asked about what he thought of the hysteria being whipped up against a minority at that time - the Jews. When it was extremely unpopular and dangerous for him to stand up against this he said:

"We are trying to wipe out the frontier of nations, we are dreaming of the community of people, we draw together into congresses the priests of all religions so that they might fall into each other's arms, we feel ourselves the brothers in the common sufferings of humanity, and we wish to work for the relief of all from the pains of existence by raising up a single altar to Human Pity. And a handful of madmen, cunning or idiotic, come and shout in our ears every morning, 'Let us kill the Jews. Let us devour the Jews. Let us massacre them. Let us exterminate them. Let us get back to the days of the gibbet and stake.'"

Zola himself was regularly threatened with lynching as, for example, when the newspaper 'Libre Parole' ('Free Speech' (!) wrote:

'The truth is marching along and Zola is in flight, although, there are in the neighbouring woods, such lovely branches... natural gibbets.' 

(Taken from pp. 217-223 my book 'The Disappearance of Emile Zola, love, literature and the Dreyfus Case' (Faber and Faber)) 

Worrying rise in numbers of young people flooding into the labour market

Announcer: "To get an idea on how Brexit is going down, we sent George Robinson to Wysham."

Cut to bus interior

George Robinson: "I'm on a bus in Wysham and with me are some people from Wysham. What do you think of the problem with young people?
Person on a bus in Wysham: I'm not against young people. But enough's enough.
Another person on a bus in Wysham: There are too many of them.
Another person on a bus in Wysham: Yes, and they undercut wages.
George Robinson: Do they?
Another person on a bus in Wysham: Yes.


Cut to field.

George Robinson: What do you think of young people?
Farmer: I need them to pick the fruit.
George Robinson: Thanks very much

Cut back to studio

Announcer: So, young people are undercutting wages, there are quite simply too many of them, flooding on to the labour market, putting a strain on education, health and public services. Will Brexit help? With me to answer that is Fiona Wilson-Grantchester.
Fiona: What Brexit will finally enable us to do is control the number of young people coming on to the labour market. It's not an anti-young people thing. It's simply a matter of controlling numbers. What we can now do is make sure that we get the right number of young people coming on stream, and we can target them to the places we need them.
Announcer: But what about the pressures that even that might put on, say, education? What if these young people might start demanding, say more education?
Fiona: We can simply say, 'enough's enough' and send them back, without having the red tape of the EU to say we can't.
Announcer: Interesting times. Thanks very much.

The Newsnight way of telling us about immigration.

Last night's Newsnight did a short segment on immigration in Boston, Lincolnshire. It showed a series of vox pops collected on a bus and (I think) at an exercise class. All the people were white and (I think) over 50, probably over 60. The commentary said that there one in ten people in Boston were immigrants. All the people said that 'immigration' was too much/too many. The commentary didn't question this in any way and of course neither showed anyone in Boston who disagreed with this view, nor - heaven forbid - one of the immigrants because as in all these scenarios, they are not 'people in Boston'. The commentary and the presentation always, always 'others' the immigrant, so the immigrant doesn't have attitudes (or if the immigrant does, it is entirely irrelevant). 

Then we cut to a farmer standing in the middle of an empty field. He said that he needed labour on his farm at picking/harvesting time and was worried about where this would come from.

End of sequence.

So we are left with a view of immigration now and in the future that it's universally awful and opposed; that what immigrants think is irrelevant; that there is possibly a 'need' for immigration if only we could find a way to tidy immigrants into 'seasons' or bus them in for particular jobs and then tell them to bugger off. 

Nice.