Why Johnny Can't Read

From Citizendium
Revision as of 11:39, 29 April 2009 by imported>Hayford Peirce (Why Johnny Can't Read (Rudolf Flesch) moved to Why Johnny Can't Read: There certainly aren't two books by the same name, so the name of the author is unnecessary here, and it is also not CZ convention to do it this way)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This article is developing and not approved.
 Main Article
 Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/index.php?title=Why_Johnny_Can%27t_Read&printable=yes
This editable Main Article is under development and subject to a disclaimer.

Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do about It was a 1955 book by Rudolf Flesch famous for forcefully supporting the use of phonics to teach reading, harshly attacking the purveyors of the then-ascendant Word method (or Whole Word method), and launching what have come to be called the Reading Wars. The book consists of two main parts: a polemic of about 110 pages, followed by an "Exercises" section of some 87 pages, which provides a (rather undetailed) method to teach children phonics.

Flesch had a Ph.D. from Teachers College at Columbia University. He was born and raised in Austria. He begins his book with "A Letter to Johnny's Mother" in which he explains that the reason little Johnny was not able to read was that he had been mistaught. Flesch writes that other countries, such as his native Austria, had no remedial reading programs because they all used phonics to teach reading, and phonics is successful whenever it is tried.

In progress--incomplete--but feel free to join in of course.

Retrieved from "https://citizendium.org/wiki/index.php?title=Why_Johnny_Can%27t_Read&oldid=594804"