“Childhood And Education #17: Is Our Children Reading” by Zvi

Reading is the most fundamental thing in education. If you can read, you can do and learn everything else. If you can’t read, well, you’re screwed.

We know how to teach reading to children. Phonics. The weird thing is we often choose to not do that, and instead to use methods that are known not to work. Principles often want to not do phonics. Teachers often heavily resist phonics. But yes, you can absolutely overcome this, as Mississippi and other Southern states have done, by insisting upon it and actually enforcing that insistence. You see huge gains.

Not all those gains persist into later grades, but a lot of the gains do persist.

No, that won’t get the children invested in reading lots of books on their own time. But given their alternatives and what we inflict on them, can you blame ‘em?

Table of Contents

1. Mississippi Can Read Now.
2. What Mississippi and Louisiana Did.
3. Spies In Every Classroom.
4. Mississippi Results Are Not Due To Retention.
5. Is Retention Helpful In General?
6. At Eighth Grade A Lot Of This Improvement Remains.
7. England Reforms Its Schools.
8. Mastery Learning.
[...]

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Outline:

(01:06) Mississippi Can Read Now

(02:24) What Mississippi and Louisiana Did

(09:10) Spies In Every Classroom

(10:41) Mississippi Results Are Not Due To Retention

(15:54) Is Retention Helpful In General?

(19:46) At Eighth Grade A Lot Of This Improvement Remains

(20:41) England Reforms Its Schools

(21:45) Mastery Learning

(24:16) The War Against Reading

(26:24) Is Our Children Reading

(26:55) No One Reads Anymore

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
May 11th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dm2vQZPZcSKb8FhWw/childhood-and-education-17-is-our-children-reading

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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