To the Editor:
I read with interest your article entitled, “GCSD is ‘in a really good place’ if Governor Hochul’s plan for teaching kids to read is adopted” in the Feb. 8, 2024 issue of The Altamont Enterprise.

The article gave a clear picture of the pendulum-swing back and forth between phonics and a whole-language approach to the teaching of reading over the past 130-or-so years. In looking back over my own learning process, I suppose I first learned to read through an approach related to phonics.

I recall a visit to family out in western New York State, when I was probably 4 years old, where my great-uncle was the principal of an elementary school. The school staff gave my sister and me some extra copies of the “Dick and Jane” books  —  you know, “See Spot run,” and so forth. I loved the pictures of the children and their pup, and as the books were read to me, I somehow by a process more like osmosis than active mental effort, was able after an aha moment, to read the stories myself.

But they were boring, as were the phonics worksheets that were required in the early grades.

So I submit to you that phonics will never give anyone a love of reading. Besides, I still had to learn all those “sight words” that don’t follow any phonemic pattern, such as dough, tough, through, and thought.

What gave me a love of reading was the “whole stories” that I was exposed to alongside the boring worksheets. I recall our teacher (maybe fourth grade or so) reading aloud to the class a chapter from Scott O’Dell’s “Island of the Blue Dolphins” each afternoon at the end of the school day. I couldn’t wait to hear what would happen to Karana the next day.

And each year at Christmastime my siblings and I would receive books from my father’s sisters. “The Secret Garden,” “Hitty: Her First Hundred Years,” “The Witch of Blackbird Pond,” all Newbery Medal winners, were a few of my favorites. I still have these books in a bookcase in my attic.

As an adult, I became a teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages, and so many other languages there were among my students: Vietnamese, Farsi (from Iran), Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Pashto (from Afghanistan), Korean, Spanish, Malayalam (from India), French, Romanian, Albanian, Japanese, and so on.

With such a hodge-podge of native languages in the class, it was obvious that a “one size fits all” approach to teaching language, and reading in particular, would not work. Phonics was useful, of course, especially for those whose native language used a different alphabet from English. My colleagues and I had to use a variety of approaches for our students to achieve success in learning both spoken and written English.

And even for native speakers of English, who may have different learning styles, why should we think that one size would fit all? I guess what I’m objecting to here is the idea of an either/or mentality. Why not both/and?

Why not both phonics for those who need it, and exposure to whole stories, good stories, that will engage learners and motivate them to want to learn to read, and to read more than the ubiquitous tweets on screens?

One additional note: The New York State Education Department is not a gubernatorial agency; it is rather under the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents, which is responsible for determining educational policies in the state. Thus, the governor may propose, but she may not impose educational policies and approaches to learning. That’s the job of the Board of Regents.

Ellen Zunon

Guilderland