Children of the Code: Hard-Wired to Read

* This is an excerpt of a book I’m working on titled, “Understanding the Science of Reading: Context Matters”.  It will be published by Guildford and out sometime in 2025.

This is a podcast version of this article. 

I was having a discussion with a fellow online who insisted that early reading instruction should consist primarily of direct instruction of phonics.  His argument was that unlike learning to use oral language, learning to use written language is not a natural process for humans.  “We’re not wired to learn these skills” he insisted.  “Reading is a uniquely human invention,” he said.  According to him, children, starting around age 5 or 6, need lots of direct instruction on letter-sound relationships in order to learn “the code”.  When they learn the code, then they can read (or decode).

This is a commonly held idea that makes good sense to many.  But we want reading instruction to be based on good science, not good sense.  So, let’s do a bit of unpack-o-rating:

1. A thought experiment.  What would happen if a group of children were placed in a controlled environment for the first three years of their lives?  In this controlled environment, only written language would be used to communicate and respond to them.  What do you think would happen when they left their controlled environment and entered the real world?  Do you not think these children would use written language to communicate?  It may take longer to learn, and they may not communicate as efficiently as oral language children, but yes, they would communicate using print.  And they would have learned to read and to write without any phonemic awareness activities or phonics instruction whatsoever.  Imagine that.  (For the record, I am not recommending this as a method for teaching reading or as a research project.)

2. Similar but not identical.  While there are similarities between learning written and learning oral language, they are not exactly the same.  However, we can use what we know about learning oral language to enhance children’s ability to learn written language.  Now, the sentence I just wrote seems often to be misread or misinterpreted by SoR advocates.  It could be that they’re sounding out words instead of creating meaning with print.  So that there can be no misunderstanding, I’ll write it a second time: We can use what we know about learning oral language to enhance children’s ability to learn written language.  While there are similarities; they are not identical. 

3. Optimal literacy learning conditions.  Oral language is learned by being immersed in real-life language situations.  Here children are immersed in authentic speaking and listening situations.  People speak for authentic purposes, and they respond to you when you speak.  We can use this understanding to create the optimal conditions for children to develop their full literacy potential.  The optimal conditions have three elements: lots of talk, lots of reading, and lots of writing all done for authentic purposes (Cambourne, 1998; Dickinson, McCabe, & Essex, 2007; Hansen, 2001; Weaver, 1990).  However, this does not mean that phonics instruction does not take place. 

4.  Phonics.  Everybody believes that phonics instruction should be one part of an early literacy program.  It’s not the ‘what’ of phonics instruction that’s at issue here, it’s the ‘how’ and ‘how much’ of phonics instruction that seems to be the point of contention.  Structured literacy advocates insist that there should be a whole lot of phonics instruction with a little reading.  And what little reading does occur should involve only ‘decodable’ books that reinforce phonics lessons.  Balanced literacy advocates would say there should be only as much phonics as students need with lots of time left for reading and enjoying real books, writing for authentic purposes, and social interaction around reading and writing.

5. More-direct instruction.  Meaning-based approaches to reading instruction include plenty of direct instruction used to teach phonics and other reading subskills.  In fact, the direct instruction that takes place in a meaning-based approach is more direct than the direct instruction that takes place in a structured approach.   It’s more-direct because it takes place directly in the context in which it is used (to the greatest degree possible).  Meaning-based literacy educators advocate more-direct instruction of phonics, rather than more (additional) direct instruction of phonics.

6. Joy.  Joy is developmentally appropriate, research-based, evidence-based, scientifically proven, extra special, super important, really wonderful condition of learning (cite).  Humans learn more and learn more efficiently when learning occurs in the context of doing something pleasurable.  In this regard, humans are much different from computers (something I seem to have to continually remind structure literacy advocates).  Computers learn things linearly regardless of any emotional conditions surrounding the input.  You just type in the stuff that needs to be learned in a specific order and there you go.  All learned up. 

When humans learn, they’re making all sorts of non-linear connections to other things as you input new information, and they have these things called ‘emotions’.  Unlike computers, emotions impact how the input is perceived, interpreted, and stored.  When humans experience joy, they’re fully engaged, able to aptly perceive and interpret the input, and able to concentrate on the joyful experience.  When humans feel boredom, frustration, fear, or humiliation, the blood in their human brains is shunted away from the frontal lobes and they are not as receptive to learning.  This is a long-winded way of saying, “Where’s the joy?”  In a structured approach to new input.  Here children are seen through a deficit lens, in need of wiring.  But where’s the joy?  There is little joy in being wired.  I challenge you to go into a structured literacy class where students are busy being wired to decode.  How much joy do you see taking place?  Now, go into a meaning-based literacy class (if you can still find one).  What do you see?  Make a pie chart in your head comparing the amount of joy per hour between the two approaches.  Which pie has the bigger slice of joy?

7. Humans are hard-wired.  It turns out that humans are hard-wired to do all sorts of things.  We’re hard-wired to make sense of things and learn.  We’re hard-wired to satiate curiosity.  We’re hard-wired to recognize patterns and make associations (cite).  We’re hard-wired to communicate with each other and to seek out and repeat joyful experiences.  And we’re hard-wired to learn things in developmentally appropriate ways at different stages of development.   Hence the conditions for learning are optimized when it’s aligned with the natural hard-wiring of humans or their natural inclinations.