The DC Board of Education holds hearings on books in curriculum, the British lens on "overteaching phonics," oral language in kindergarten, teachers speak out on curriculum quirks, and more.
On those Landmark books going out of print because nobody was buying them anymore....that happened because they are bad.
The first book in the series is "The Voyages of Christopher Columbus" by Armstrong Sperry and virtually every part of the story it tells is factually inaccurate. According to the book, people laughed at Columbus because he told them the earth was round.
"I hesitate, learned friends, to voice it! It is based on the idea that the earth is shaped as a globe! Ah, already I hear your laughter!"
They knew the earth was round but they laughed because they thought his calculations were wrong -- which they were -- and sailing west was not a fast passage to the Indies.
It claims that Spain was poor at the time.
"True, sire, Spain is poor now, but she need not long remain so."
Spain was exceedingly rich at the time but cashflow was tight due to the Reconquista having finished just months prior.
In another book in the series, Prehistoric America by Anne Terry White, the same category of issues exist. Its description of human migration timelines is wrong. Its description of indigenous cultures is wrong. Its paleontological details are wrong. None of this should come as a surprise, really -- the book was written in 1950 and, just as one example, modern dinosaur research didn't kick off until the 1970s.
They went out of print for a reason and no one should mourn their loss.
I have seen a number of posts from smart folks talking about reading these when they were younger. I appreciate that they weren't perfect. But what replaces them?
I'm not sure there's a single reasonably modern series that tries to cover the same ground. Wikipedia says it has 122 books in the series. Many of them have modern alternatives available and for the ones that don't it's because very few people today think we need, for instance, a children's biography of Sun Yat-sen or Custer's Last Stand, mostly because we've questioned how central they actually are to, well, anything..
There is definitely real value in a "series". But the modern publishing world is vastly different than it was in the 1950s and it is much, much easier for a book to get printed. And the large number of books in the series meant they had tons of contract authors that honestly aren't really that good even by the standards of children's literature. People talk about the one book by C.S. Forester or Shirley Jackson but never mention the three books by A.B.C. Whipple or four books by Anne Terry White.
It isn't like we're suffering from a dearth of children's books on George Washington or Lincoln or the Vikings or the Pilgrims.
I suspect that the overwhelming majority of the nostalgia for the books is they presented a very "America is a shining city on a hill" vibe that was common in the 1950s and they feel is missing from modern books for kids.
If *that* specifically is what someone is looking for, they may indeed struggle though there are series like Heroes of Liberty that cover similar vibes but without the same scope.
This is the content I crave about UK vs US phonics teaching. I tried to teach my kid to read using the classic 100 easy lessons book - it worked but was much more painful than just getting some Read Write inc flascards and books. My second son has found it much easier!
Mark, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that podcast. I'm a big fan of both Chris and Zach, but some of what Chris was confidently saying about linguistic phonics struck me as not quite right, and frankly, left me scratching my head.
Chris says he would happily teach with either Sounds-Write (linguistic phonics) or UFLI (not linguistic phonics). They are very different, but it sounds like he doesn't think the differences matter. I wonder if he has any experience using either or both of those programs in a real classroom with real beginning readers.
In his latest Substack post, Mark Seidenberg continues the drumbeat of his concerns with educational products such as UFLI, which he lists as an example, and which a recent Fordham survey found to be the most widespread program in US K-2.
I dislike the "overteaching" term Seidenberg uses, but I do think many of his points are important and warrant attention.
I hear different layers of disconnect in the ongoing discourse on this topic, including in this podcast.
In general, I thought it was an excellent listen. In particular, Chris explained the sound to print versus print to sound issue very clearly and made the often neglected point that whilst phonics programmes have an orientation they surly aren’t really purely one or another. However, my eyebrows did go up at the last comment about Sounds-Write and UFLJ. I think Chris said in the podcast that he has experience teaching Sounds-Write but would also be happy to teach UFLI because he thought the quality of teaching was more important than the programme. With the caveat that I really don’t know much about UFLI, their scope and sequence does contain syllable types which Chris earlier said he thought was unhelpful. From my own perspective, there were some other things on the UFLI scope and sequence that I would prefer not to spend time teaching explicitly in a phonics programme so I would differ with Chris on that point. I am curious to know just how long teaching the UFLI sequence would take and how it compares to the suggestion of 200 hours of phonics that Chris made in the podcast.
For me, it was a missed opportunity to shed light on important questions and instead it muddied the waters, and reinforced why the labels “sound-to-print” and “print-to-sound” may not be serving us well. I see it as less about “purity” and more about two distinct lenses, instructional schemas, and mindsets about how the code works and how it is presented to learners. These conceptual frameworks matter and they shouldn’t be so easily dismissed without a deeper analysis of the research, especially readily available classroom and school-wide outcome data.
I think programs are indeed clearly one or the other if you're talking about the whole organizational framework, not just processes or activities. Programs (using either framework) certainly do differ in multiple ways, but I would not describe them as being on any kind of 'continuum'. I was surprised by this characterization and baffled by his suggestion that there is 'a sensible middle ground between between 'print to speech' and 'speech to print'. That doesn't make sense to me.
Can I give a concrete example of what I would mean by this (obviously can't speak for Chris but it could be this)? When teaching a long vowel sounds like /ay/, I think a more pure "sound to print" approach would teach all the alternative spellings. This was the approach used by Elana Gordon in the piece I linked to in my piece. It's also (broadly) the approach taken by Sounds-Write. However, in my experience, it is more common in the SSP programmes to teach a single spelling of the sound first and then come back to alternative spellings later. This can be seen in both RWI and Little Wandle which are the 2 most popular SSP programmes. This is frowned on by some because it is regarded as a deviation from the "sound to print" approach. They think teaching all (or all the common) spellings is better because it encourages flexibility and a better understanding of the English language. I can see the argument but can also see the potential problem of cognitive overload here for young learners.
Thank you for this example. I'm also not sure if this is what Chris meant. A few thoughts:
Although I'm not too familiar with the SSP programs you mention, as far as I understand, with Jolly Phonics , the approach is to start with one grapheme for each sound and then begin to add spelling alternatives for the sounds. So, you might teach 'ee' first for the sound, and then later add 'y', 'ea', 'ey', 'ei', etc. (maybe one by one or a few at a time). Although this is certainly different from the linguistic phonics approach taken in Sounds-Write, I'd say there is still basically a sound-print orientation that differs from programs used widely in the US (such as UFLI or Wilson Fundations) that organize the scope and sequence around orthographic patterns like syllable types, e.g., introducing the 'vowel team' pattern or the 'silent e' pattern, with several graphems representing different sounds.
If Chris meant there could be 'a sensible middle ground' between programs broadly organized around sounds like Jolly Phonics or Sounds-Write and programs broadly organized around orthographic patterns like 'syllable types', then I find that view odd and confusing.
If the question is simply whether to teach one spelling alternative at a time (or 2 or 3 or 4 or all), then that is a much more narrow and precise question. My own opinion is that it is useful to teach more than 1 in order to, as you note, promote flexibility and reinforce the concept that the same sound can be spelled in multiple ways. Linguistic Phonics programs do this with young beginning readers only after teaching a transparent code with 1 sound-1 grapheme correspondences, and establishing the alphabetic principle and a level of proficiency with blending and segmenting. Different LP programs will then approach the teaching of the 'extended' or 'advanced' code differently. When providing intervention with an older student (as Elana Gordon described), it may make sense to introduce all alternatives at once, as the student has likely already encountered many of them but hasn't developed the schema that they are all 'ways to spell' the same sound. Conversely, with some students in intervention, it may make sense to work with only a few alternatives at a time.
I agree that managing and optimizing cognitive load is very important! In my experience, teaching several alternative spellings at once within a carefully structured program (one that ensures young learners establish a foundation with an 'initial' or 'basic' code at the start) does not introduce extraneous cognitive load. It's important to note that the expectation is not that learners memorize and master all these spellings; the purpose is simply to establish the schema. Both structured and unstructured experiences, reading and writing words with these patterns over time, consolidate the learning.
On those Landmark books going out of print because nobody was buying them anymore....that happened because they are bad.
The first book in the series is "The Voyages of Christopher Columbus" by Armstrong Sperry and virtually every part of the story it tells is factually inaccurate. According to the book, people laughed at Columbus because he told them the earth was round.
"I hesitate, learned friends, to voice it! It is based on the idea that the earth is shaped as a globe! Ah, already I hear your laughter!"
They knew the earth was round but they laughed because they thought his calculations were wrong -- which they were -- and sailing west was not a fast passage to the Indies.
It claims that Spain was poor at the time.
"True, sire, Spain is poor now, but she need not long remain so."
Spain was exceedingly rich at the time but cashflow was tight due to the Reconquista having finished just months prior.
In another book in the series, Prehistoric America by Anne Terry White, the same category of issues exist. Its description of human migration timelines is wrong. Its description of indigenous cultures is wrong. Its paleontological details are wrong. None of this should come as a surprise, really -- the book was written in 1950 and, just as one example, modern dinosaur research didn't kick off until the 1970s.
They went out of print for a reason and no one should mourn their loss.
I have seen a number of posts from smart folks talking about reading these when they were younger. I appreciate that they weren't perfect. But what replaces them?
I'm not sure there's a single reasonably modern series that tries to cover the same ground. Wikipedia says it has 122 books in the series. Many of them have modern alternatives available and for the ones that don't it's because very few people today think we need, for instance, a children's biography of Sun Yat-sen or Custer's Last Stand, mostly because we've questioned how central they actually are to, well, anything..
There is definitely real value in a "series". But the modern publishing world is vastly different than it was in the 1950s and it is much, much easier for a book to get printed. And the large number of books in the series meant they had tons of contract authors that honestly aren't really that good even by the standards of children's literature. People talk about the one book by C.S. Forester or Shirley Jackson but never mention the three books by A.B.C. Whipple or four books by Anne Terry White.
It isn't like we're suffering from a dearth of children's books on George Washington or Lincoln or the Vikings or the Pilgrims.
I suspect that the overwhelming majority of the nostalgia for the books is they presented a very "America is a shining city on a hill" vibe that was common in the 1950s and they feel is missing from modern books for kids.
If *that* specifically is what someone is looking for, they may indeed struggle though there are series like Heroes of Liberty that cover similar vibes but without the same scope.
This is the content I crave about UK vs US phonics teaching. I tried to teach my kid to read using the classic 100 easy lessons book - it worked but was much more painful than just getting some Read Write inc flascards and books. My second son has found it much easier!
Great round up as always. Confused how I missed Chris Such on the Zach Groshell podcast but I will rectify that shortly….
It's brilliant, as always. Thanks for writing your piece, I really enjoyed it!
Mark, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that podcast. I'm a big fan of both Chris and Zach, but some of what Chris was confidently saying about linguistic phonics struck me as not quite right, and frankly, left me scratching my head.
Chris says he would happily teach with either Sounds-Write (linguistic phonics) or UFLI (not linguistic phonics). They are very different, but it sounds like he doesn't think the differences matter. I wonder if he has any experience using either or both of those programs in a real classroom with real beginning readers.
In his latest Substack post, Mark Seidenberg continues the drumbeat of his concerns with educational products such as UFLI, which he lists as an example, and which a recent Fordham survey found to be the most widespread program in US K-2.
I dislike the "overteaching" term Seidenberg uses, but I do think many of his points are important and warrant attention.
I hear different layers of disconnect in the ongoing discourse on this topic, including in this podcast.
In general, I thought it was an excellent listen. In particular, Chris explained the sound to print versus print to sound issue very clearly and made the often neglected point that whilst phonics programmes have an orientation they surly aren’t really purely one or another. However, my eyebrows did go up at the last comment about Sounds-Write and UFLJ. I think Chris said in the podcast that he has experience teaching Sounds-Write but would also be happy to teach UFLI because he thought the quality of teaching was more important than the programme. With the caveat that I really don’t know much about UFLI, their scope and sequence does contain syllable types which Chris earlier said he thought was unhelpful. From my own perspective, there were some other things on the UFLI scope and sequence that I would prefer not to spend time teaching explicitly in a phonics programme so I would differ with Chris on that point. I am curious to know just how long teaching the UFLI sequence would take and how it compares to the suggestion of 200 hours of phonics that Chris made in the podcast.
For me, it was a missed opportunity to shed light on important questions and instead it muddied the waters, and reinforced why the labels “sound-to-print” and “print-to-sound” may not be serving us well. I see it as less about “purity” and more about two distinct lenses, instructional schemas, and mindsets about how the code works and how it is presented to learners. These conceptual frameworks matter and they shouldn’t be so easily dismissed without a deeper analysis of the research, especially readily available classroom and school-wide outcome data.
I think programs are indeed clearly one or the other if you're talking about the whole organizational framework, not just processes or activities. Programs (using either framework) certainly do differ in multiple ways, but I would not describe them as being on any kind of 'continuum'. I was surprised by this characterization and baffled by his suggestion that there is 'a sensible middle ground between between 'print to speech' and 'speech to print'. That doesn't make sense to me.
Can I give a concrete example of what I would mean by this (obviously can't speak for Chris but it could be this)? When teaching a long vowel sounds like /ay/, I think a more pure "sound to print" approach would teach all the alternative spellings. This was the approach used by Elana Gordon in the piece I linked to in my piece. It's also (broadly) the approach taken by Sounds-Write. However, in my experience, it is more common in the SSP programmes to teach a single spelling of the sound first and then come back to alternative spellings later. This can be seen in both RWI and Little Wandle which are the 2 most popular SSP programmes. This is frowned on by some because it is regarded as a deviation from the "sound to print" approach. They think teaching all (or all the common) spellings is better because it encourages flexibility and a better understanding of the English language. I can see the argument but can also see the potential problem of cognitive overload here for young learners.
Thank you for this example. I'm also not sure if this is what Chris meant. A few thoughts:
Although I'm not too familiar with the SSP programs you mention, as far as I understand, with Jolly Phonics , the approach is to start with one grapheme for each sound and then begin to add spelling alternatives for the sounds. So, you might teach 'ee' first for the sound, and then later add 'y', 'ea', 'ey', 'ei', etc. (maybe one by one or a few at a time). Although this is certainly different from the linguistic phonics approach taken in Sounds-Write, I'd say there is still basically a sound-print orientation that differs from programs used widely in the US (such as UFLI or Wilson Fundations) that organize the scope and sequence around orthographic patterns like syllable types, e.g., introducing the 'vowel team' pattern or the 'silent e' pattern, with several graphems representing different sounds.
If Chris meant there could be 'a sensible middle ground' between programs broadly organized around sounds like Jolly Phonics or Sounds-Write and programs broadly organized around orthographic patterns like 'syllable types', then I find that view odd and confusing.
If the question is simply whether to teach one spelling alternative at a time (or 2 or 3 or 4 or all), then that is a much more narrow and precise question. My own opinion is that it is useful to teach more than 1 in order to, as you note, promote flexibility and reinforce the concept that the same sound can be spelled in multiple ways. Linguistic Phonics programs do this with young beginning readers only after teaching a transparent code with 1 sound-1 grapheme correspondences, and establishing the alphabetic principle and a level of proficiency with blending and segmenting. Different LP programs will then approach the teaching of the 'extended' or 'advanced' code differently. When providing intervention with an older student (as Elana Gordon described), it may make sense to introduce all alternatives at once, as the student has likely already encountered many of them but hasn't developed the schema that they are all 'ways to spell' the same sound. Conversely, with some students in intervention, it may make sense to work with only a few alternatives at a time.
I agree that managing and optimizing cognitive load is very important! In my experience, teaching several alternative spellings at once within a carefully structured program (one that ensures young learners establish a foundation with an 'initial' or 'basic' code at the start) does not introduce extraneous cognitive load. It's important to note that the expectation is not that learners memorize and master all these spellings; the purpose is simply to establish the schema. Both structured and unstructured experiences, reading and writing words with these patterns over time, consolidate the learning.
I just wrote this piece yesterday about the key to changing our society is through literacy: https://megsteen.substack.com/p/the-return-of-we-part-2