Growing the Science of Reading Movement
Last week, I wrote about polarization in the science of reading movement. Today, I want to explore how we can bring more people into this movement. Put another way, how do we build the racially and politically diverse coalition of teachers, administrators, professors, politicians, and parents that is necessary to change the way reading is taught? The current coalition is clearly not enough.
So what do we do about it? Here are a few ideas:
Forget the “the science” of reading. Talk about the social justice of reading. This is how Kareem Weaver answers the question. First, he got his Oakland branch of the NAACP to prioritize literacy in the community. Then, he brought in other groups and is building a broad coalition to tackle literacy in Oakland. Weaver talks about reading as a basic human and civil right that is necessary to thrive in the United States today (and it clearly is). He frames his advocacy around the unjust personal and societal cost of not learning how to read and emphasizes the disproportionate impact this has on students from the most marginalized communities.
Only talk about “the science” of reading. On the other hand, many parent activists I’ve spoken to—both liberal and conservative—say that the way to depolarize this issue is to focus on science. “Once you allow yourself to see the science, it’s unseeable,” one conservative-leaning school board member told me recently. “Stay focused on the science. Don’t talk about politics, and you’ll get somewhere.”
Create culturally responsive curricula. The movement calls on schools to adopt curricula that align with the science of reading. This is a very reasonable goal. But the aligned curricula are not always or even often culturally relevant or culturally affirming for many communities. This must change. Administrators, teachers, and students need to see themselves reflected in their curricula. Frankly, this should be a prerequisite for any science of reading-aligned curriculum.
Storytelling. Emily Hanford activated the science of reading world by telling the stories of students, parents, teachers, and schools that have been failed by disproven curricula. Podcasts like the Black and Dyslexic Podcast continue to do this work today with an intersectional lens. We need more of this. We also need to hear from more students about their struggles and successes. We need storytellers to build arguments without being alienating and to forge connections and community between strangers.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. How many parents and policymakers do we lose to boredom or confusion when we start talking about phonemic awareness and morphology and phonemes and graphemes? How many times am I guilty of this in this post and previous posts? We need to develop accessible and inclusive talking points and strategies for bringing laypeople into the movement. And then we need to equip them with similar strategies and talking points so they can bring in their friends. I’m not sure if this exists yet. If it does, please share it with me!
The science of the reading movement needs to keep growing. It needs to convert and mobilize schools of education, parents, policymakers, departments of education, school boards, curriculum developers, pediatricians, and most of all teachers and school leaders. No single approach is going to work on everyone. But at the end of the day, the more we talk about the science and the social justice of reading, the more we tell relatable and compelling stories about successes as well as failures, the more we make our materials and arguments accessible and inclusive, the more successful the movement will be. We need to start now. Our children’s futures depend on it.
