Reading Readiness

The concept reading readiness appears to have been introduced in the United States in a publication of the National Society for the Study of Education in 1925. The concept was based on the notion that a child’s readiness to cope with specified learning tasks is fundamentally a process of maturation, and that the process of maturation could not be appreciably speeded up. The role of learning was considered to play only a supportive role.¹

Carleton Washburne, with M. V. Morphett, provided the empirical facts that seemed to prove it was a waste of time — and probably harmful, too — to try to teach children with a mental age lower than 6½ years, or at the very least 6 years, to read. This was in 1929, and the investigation on which the finding was based was carried out in schools in Winnetka. Afterward, this finding was quoted with amazing regularity for many decades to warn against the dangers of beginning too early with the teaching of reading.²

Morphett and Washburne's conclusion was nothing but a mere myth. Japanese parents in the 1980s provided ample proof of this. According to Sheridan, by the time Japanese children entered first grade, only 1 percent of them could not recognize any Hiragana symbols (Hiragana is one of the Japanese syllabaries). It was not unusual for 4-year-olds to read books entirely in Hiragana. If there were any truth in Morphett and Washburne's conclusion, it would have been difficult to explain why, at the time, reading problems were nonexistent in Japan, while parents used to teach their children to read at such a tender age. In fact, in the 1980s, “excessive reading,” as opposed to a lack of interest in reading, was a far more widely recognized problem in Japan.³

Schmidt also points out that an analysis of Morphett and Washburne's original papers reveals — even to a person with no sophisticated knowledge of statistical procedures — that their inference was based on very scanty evidence indeed and that their generalization rested on very insecure foundations. Nevertheless, their inference became a well-accepted dogma.⁴

It should be noted that reading readiness is not an automatic process. Before building a house, one needs to lay a foundation. Unless there is a strong and solid foundation, cracks will soon appear in the walls, and with no foundations, the walls will collapse. In the same way one needs to lay a proper foundation before it becomes possible for a child to benefit from a course in reading.

Audiblox is a multisensory cognitive enhancement program that can be used from as early as three years of age to lay a proper foundation for reading and learning.

Article Sources:
1.) Schmidt, W. H. O., Child Development: The Human, Cultural, and Educational Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
2.) Ibid.
3.) Sheridan, E, M., “Reading disabilities: Can we blame the written language?” Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1983, vol. 16(2), 81-86.
4.) Schmidt, Child Development.