Learning to read: why faulty theories should not be allowed to get in the way of primary education

The hypothesis that children learn to read the same way they learn to speak, through immersion, has done much damage. Indian schools are changing course under India’s 2020 policy, but the lesson is clear: don’t go blindly by unproven theories.

This idea is called the whole language approach to learning how to read and write. Its intellectual core, associated with American scholars Kenneth Goodman and Frank Smith from the late 1960s, went s…

Originally published by Livemint. Read the full article →