The Why Our Children Can't Read by Diane McGuinness, 0684831619, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

A must read for any parent or teacher.

The Reading Wars have heated up; however, this time the twoopponents are not whole word and phonics; it is "the proper way to teach our writing code (phoneme awareness programs)" and all of the others.

Diane McGuinness, using the scientific approach -- not pseudoscience -- has made an exhaustive study of, many writing systems, and has extracted the proper manner to teach our reading code.

She critiques many different reading programs and their so-called research: Whole word is disastrous; whereas, phonics is not complete.

As required by the scientific method, she has set up the proper experimental designs and conducted research to validate her approach.

All of her findings are statistically significant.

Dyslexic and ADD children have been taught how to read using her approach -- Diane's work questions the legitimacy of these educational "symptoms."

Easy to read. Chock full of goodies. A must read.

The most important book on education of the past 20 years.

As a teacher with advanced degrees in reading and learning disabilities, I have never read a more concise, persuasive (and useful) book. Ms. McGuinness's research results certainly changed my professional direction. I bought Reading Reflex as well, became a certified Phono-Graphix instructor/trainer, and have built a successful reading therapy practice. EVERY client has succeeded using this approach (average: 24 session-hours). The sad part is the non-believers and the naysayers, those teachers and administrators who refuse to acknowledge the power of the evidence, refuse to read about this paradigm shift in instruction, and refuse to discuss the new possibilities for struggling readers of any age. Some even attempt to deny the obvious results! All I can say is I consult my copy of this book so often that it's falling apart--and I've just ordered a second copy from Amazon!

This book is a must read for anybody with children

The reviewer in the first review listed asserts that Dr. McGuinness "may have overstated her case" in that there is "only one way to teach [reading]". What Dr. Mcguinness actually says is that there is a BEST way to teach reading. The distinction is important, since even Dr. McGuinness acknowledges that a (slim) majority of children taught by whole language will actually succeed in learning to read. But a slim majority is something to be more ashamed than proud of. Her discussion of the history of writing systems and their relationship to the spoken language is lucid and compelling. Her follow through on the research related to the acquisition of reading is equally brilliant. I have started tracking down the references listed in her bibliography, and if anything, she has for reasons of space limitations given us an inadequate picture of the colossal amount of research in support of her position. I cannot believe that any thinking person who follows the trails of her bibliography will fail to be outraged at the pseudoscientific, intellectually bankrupt nonsense that is being foisted on our children under the label of whole language (or should that be "hole langwij"?). Using her ideas and the methods outlined in her other publications as well as those of her son and his wife, my own oldest child--age 5-- is well on her way to being an independent reader. I can't recommend this enough.

A one-eyed book but with good vision in the remaining eye!

This is a strange book: it's `true believer' rhetoric is irritating to put it mildly. When it steps outside the area of competence of its author (strategies for the practice of teaching reading) it is usually plain silly. Ignore the chapters on `Not so universal education' and `Is anyone in the schools listening'. McGuiness's `sociology of education' is puerile. But the rest of the book gives a very good presentation of what appears to be one sensible approach to the teaching of reading. Even here, however, if one stuck to the presription without additionally stressing the need to teach reading for comprehension and reading in context, my guess is the result would be disaster. I am not surprised that Pinker gives it such an enthusiastic foreward: his work tends to be one-eyed as well, but with acute vision in the remaining eye.

Like a lighthouse in the storm

An excellent book, founded in common sense, close observation, and real science. I hope it starts a revolution, and soon.

Rita Kramer complains about the occasional tone of the book that the author's "own method is the only way to teach reading". Don't be put off by that. The book does make (and justify) some very strong claims about what any successful method for learning to read and write has to do.

This book is the theory book. The companion "how to" or workbook, for parents doing home-schooling or trying to help their children learn to read, is "Reading Reflex", by Geoffry and Carmen McGuinness.

It's no surprise that the book is very critical of whole language, invented spelling, and such. But the real win for me was its critique of (traditional) phonics. Most phonics teaching stinks. It's unsystematic, and riddled with false claims and utterly confused classifications. Phonics is the way to go, but you do have to get it right.

Most controversial will be its claim that there is no such thing as dyslexia. If you or a family member are "dyslexic" or "LD", by all means get and read this book.

The book argues that dyslexia is not inborn but the result of being intellectually maimed by teaching mistakes. You can verify for yourself that these mistakes are pervasive throughout our school system and you can satisfy yourself that they are indeed mistakes: they are false statements about the writing system of English. One consequence of that is that the smarter the child, the more deeply he or she gets wedged if commanded to believe nonsense.

The book also claims that dyslexics can be rescued. It is not a snake-oil miracle cure; the "12 hour" figure is often cited, but this is only for getting a child unstuck and moving again. As the book discusses, adults and emotionally traumatized people take longer to get unstuck, and nobody learns to read from start to finish in 12 hours.

What the book is really claiming is that dyslexia is like being lost in a storm with a map that lies. You can struggle all you want but the map will subvert all your best efforts, and you give up. The moment you have a good map, your efforts become effective again.

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