A brief history of reading instruction in the United States

In colonial times, reading instruction was simple and straightforward: teach children the code and then let them read. At that time, reading material was not specially written for children but consisted primarily of the Bible and some patriotic essays.

One of the earliest and most influential sources of reading instruction was **The New England Primer**, published in the late 1680s. This book was based on a simple and straightforward approach: teach children the code (the relationship between letters and sounds) and then let them read. The book used a syllabic phonics method, which taught children to read words by breaking them into syllables. The book also contained religious texts, such as the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, as well as patriotic essays and moral lessons.

In the early 1800s, two other popular books for reading instruction were **Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller** and **the McGuffey Readers**. Both books sold over 100 million copies and were widely used in schools and homes. Webster's book focused on teaching spelling and pronunciation, while McGuffey's books offered graded readers with engaging stories and poems. McGuffey also gave teachers the option to use different methods for teaching reading: the word method (top-down), which taught children to recognize words as wholes; the phonic method (bottom-up), which taught children to blend sounds into words; or a combination of the two methods.

Not until the mid-19th century did this approach change significantly.

Educators, in particular Horace Mann, began to advocate changes in reading instructional methods. He observed that children were bored and "death-like" at school, and that instruction needed to engage children's interest in the reading material by teaching them to read whole words. Reading instruction in American schools underwent significant changes in the 1800s, as different methods and materials were introduced and debated.

In the mid-1800s, some educators began to advocate for changes in reading instruction, arguing that children needed more meaningful and interesting texts to read. One of these educators was **Horace Mann**, who observed that children were bored and "death-like" at school. He suggested that teachers should use more sight words (words that are recognized by sight rather than by sounding out) and more engaging readers, such as **the McGuffey Readers**.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reading instruction became more focused on comprehension and meaning, rather than on decoding and sounding out. Some of the influences that shaped this shift were **the progressive education movement**, which emphasized child-centered learning and holistic development; **the psychological research of Edward Thorndike**, who argued that reading was a complex mental process that involved association, inference, and prediction; and **the development of new types of readers**, such as **the Elson Readers** and **the Dick and Jane series**, which used simple language, repetition, pictures, and stories to teach children to read whole words by sight.

Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, reading programs became very focused on comprehension and taught children to read whole words by sight. Phonics was not to be taught except sparingly and as a tool to be used as a last resort. In the 1950s Rudolf Flesch wrote a book called Why Johnny Can't Read, a passionate argument in favor of teaching children to read using phonics. He also criticized publishers and experts for promoting ineffective methods based on profit or ideology. The book sparked a public debate and polarized the reading community among supporters of phonics (bottom-up) and whole word (top-down) methods.

In the 1970s an instructional philosophy called whole language (which explicitly de-emphasizes teaching phonics) was introduced, and it became the primary method of reading instruction in the 1980s and 1990s. Whole language advocates that children learn to read naturally by being exposed to authentic texts and meaningful contexts. They argue that phonics instruction is unnecessary and even harmful, as it interferes with children's natural ability to construct meaning from texts. However, critics of whole language point out that many children struggle to read without explicit instruction on how the alphabetic system works, and that whole language ignores the scientific evidence on how reading works in the brain.

In 2000, the National Reading Panel published a report that reviewed the existing research on effective reading instruction. The report concluded that systematic phonics instruction is beneficial for all students, especially those at risk of reading failure. The report also recommended other components of reading instruction, such as fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies. The report influenced federal policies and funding for reading programs, such as the Reading First initiative.

Another development is the emergence of balanced literacy, which is an attempt to combine elements of both phonics and whole language approaches. Balanced literacy advocates that teachers use a variety of methods and materials to meet the diverse needs of their students. However, balanced literacy is not well defined or implemented consistently across schools and districts. Some critics argue that balanced literacy is just a disguise for whole language, and that it does not provide enough explicit and systematic phonics instruction for struggling readers.

Recently, the science of reading has been making significant inroads in reading instruction within American schools.

The science of reading is a term that refers to the **converging evidence** from multiple fields of study on how children learn to read and what are the most effective ways to teach them . It is not a specific program or product, but an **approach** based on decades of research and evidence .

The science of reading identifies **five key elements** that are critical for reading comprehension: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. These elements are based on the understanding of how the brain processes written language and how reading develops in both typical and atypical readers.

The science of reading has been around for a long time, but it gained more prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when several reports and reviews synthesized the findings from thousands of studies and highlighted the importance of evidence-based instruction for all students . Since then, the science of reading has continued to evolve and inform policy and practice in literacy education.