Suppose one tries to debate the Science of Reading (SoR) and what it is precisely. They will likely be met by cognitive psychologists, parents, and educators who are insistent about the importance of neuroscience.

Trying to understand how the brain works and why some children have learning disabilities has existed for decades. I’m staring at an old textbook special education teachers used: Alexander Bannatyne’s 1971 Language, Reading, and Learning Disabilities: Psychology, Neuropsychology, Diagnosis, and Remediation.

However, how neuroscience translates into the classroom today, especially how it’s supposed to indicate the existence of a Science of Reading, seems murky with drastic political ramifications.

For example, what makes unproven, costly digital reading programs purchased by states and school districts and heavily advertised as the SoR acceptable? Where is the scientific evidence, proof that these programs work?

No matter what you think of neuroscience and the SoR, it has become a profitable marketing tool for reading.

To better understand the SoR, I read Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read, by cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2009), the Science of Reading bible—one of the book’s blurbs is from the late Oliver Sacks, whose writings have been intriguing.

I also watched Dr. Steven L. Strauss’s Debunking Science of Reading Neuroscience Claims (2024) video. Strauss, a reputable neurologist, M.D., and Ph.D. linguist, raises valid questions concerning the SoR, including its effects on bilingual instruction. He disputes some of the claims made by Dehaene and SoR enthusiasts and describes the limitations of MRI brain imaging and controversies regarding the SoR.

Pediatrics published his commentary Politics and Reading at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 2002. And Phi Delta Kappan also published Challenging the NICHD Reading Research Agenda in 2003.

The Reading League asked Dr. Dehaene about the Strauss video. They state:

In response to this claim, Dr. Dehaene emphasized that hundreds of brain-imaging studies have utilized sentences and texts as stimuli during fMRI. These studies have provided valuable evidence regarding how brain circuits form and function regardless of what is being read.

Dehaene notes:

What [the speaker] says is so utterly false that it betrays a dramatic lack of knowledge of the scientific literature…for more than 20 years, we and many other researchers have routinely used sentences and texts as stimuli during functional MRI, both written and spoken…shown how written and spoken texts activate extremely similar brain circuits for meaning and used fMRI to dissect the brain circuits for reading at various levels, from single word processing to syntactic and semantic integration.

What Dehaene says here may all be true, that Strauss was wrong, but it’s still hard to see any real-world evidence that reading can only be taught focusing on formal systematic phonics.

Stanislas Dehaene’s writings about dyslexia are compelling, but still his proclamations about MRI imaging, no matter if they’re sentences or text, translating it to proof that all children need systematic phonics instruction in the classroom, seems hard to fathom.

It’s hard to see how brain science, especially visual MRI depictions of the brain, conclusively links phonics, one piece of instruction, to classroom reading as an isolated rigid holy grail for all children.

In referencing neuroscience and optimal teaching methods, Dehaene states:

A great deal of caution is needed here. My own impression is that neuroscience is still far from being prescriptive. A wide gap separates the theoretical knowledge accumulated in the laboratory from practice in the classroom. Applications raise problems that are often better addressed by teachers than by the theory-based expectations of scientists. 

This makes sense, but he continues by implying that children need the same instruction.

Nevertheless, brain imaging and psychological data cannot be detached from the great pedagogical debates. Relativism notwithstanding, it simply is not true that there are hundreds of ways to learn to read. Every child is unique…but when it comes to reading, all have roughly the same brain that imposes the same constraints and the same learning sequence (p.218).

Children may learn to read similarly, however, teachers working with children with reading problems face variables that often interrupt or derail a child’s learning sequence.

In fact, children likely don’t show up to school with the same reading history or needs. Some learn to read easily, or may already read, and others move along a bit slower but catch up. Children with disabilities may need more assistance and intensive instruction.

But students aren’t usually on the same page, ready for a one-size-fits-all reading regimen. Unfortunately, that seems to be how the SoR and neuroscience often translates into classroom instruction, with all children facing the teacher (or screen) with rigid phonics and phonetic rule instruction. Personalized online instruction may individualize needs, but assessment goals are the same.

Even where a group of children with reading disabilities warrant an IEP, one finds a variety of reading differences. Some children can’t focus. Others read well out loud but struggle with memory and comprehension. Still others read O.K. but can’t write. Some children auditorily misinterpret sounds, or have motor problems. They may not be able to name words or pictures (dysnomia). There’s a much longer list, of course, and this is why educators grapple with student differentiation, especially in the inclusion classroom.

It’s also a reason why reading teachers require a well-rounded understanding of how children learn to read and many methods to address the difficulties their students may face during instruction.

Sometimes these problems resolve themselves when children get lots of practice with books they can read and enjoy, or when they get intensive one-to-one or group instruction. Often, the best remediation involves both of these practices.

Dehaene says around age five or six the visual recognition processes are in place, particularly conducive to the acquisition of novel visual shapes like letters and words (p. 199). If I understand correctly, he’s describing this as the time to begin formal reading instruction. Morphett and Washburne found in their 1936 study  6 to 6 1/2 to be best.

Dehaene doesn’t speak, that I see, to fads that make children read earlier than we ever used to expect and whether some children may be mistakenly labeled disabled or slow for that reason.

Later Dehaene concludes:

If a child is to learn to read quickly and well, he [sic] must be given well-structured grapheme-phoneme instruction (p.227).

But most of us also know children who read without systematic phonics instruction, who grasp graphemes and phonemes with a language-rich environment. They hear and see letter sound connections by being read to frequently, scanning words and pictures, with access to lots of reading material to enjoy.

Also, if well-structured grapheme-phoneme instruction was necessary how have so many people become literate for centuries without it? I learned to read with Dick and Jane in first grade, after my mother read to me when I was very young. When I faced a phonics chart in third grade, I was already checking out chapter books, and loved reading. Phonics may have helped me become a good speller.

Some children might need intensive phonics instruction but who those children are and how much systematic instruction is the question.

In the second chapter, Dehaene criticizes whole language. This is questionable for a variety of reasons and worthy of a separate review.

Dehaene covers much about how we learn to read that’s interesting, but the emphasis on the connection between neuroscience and the systematic instruction of phonics for all students seems weak, especially the connection of MRIs to phonics in the classroom.

References

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: the science and evolution of a human invention. Viking.

Strauss, S. L. (2002). Politics and Reading at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Pediatrics 109 (1): 143–144. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.109.1.143

Strauss, S. L. (2003). Challenging the NICHD Reading Research Agenda. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(6), 438–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170308400605

Debunking Science of Reading Neuroscience Claims with Dr. Steven Strauss 4/24/24.