KAELI Frank Smith

Kentucky Adult Educators Literacy Institute
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Frank Smith

Frank Smith, who makes his home in Victoria, B.C., is currently a distinguished visiting professor and head of the Department of Applied English Language Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is the author of 15 books on language and learning, including Insult to Intelligence and To Think. The following excerpts were taken from an article based on a speech he delivered in May 1991 at the annual convention of the International Reading Association.

Learning to Read: The Never-Ending Debate

The prevailing view in education today is that learning is usually difficult and takes place sporadically, in small amounts, as a result of solitary individual effort, and when properly organized and rewarded. Students must have a deliberate intention to learn and must give learning their full and (if necessary) repeated attention. Some people are better at learning than others, although anything can be learned if attempted often enough, at an appropriate level, and with sufficient “desire” and adequate reinforcement. Learning is transient, and most of what is learned is likely to be quickly forgotten unless “rehearsed” or ”refreshed”—especially before examinations and tests. [Official View]

The alternative view is that learning is continuous, spontaneous, and effortless, requiring no particular attention, conscious motivation, or specific reinforcement; learning occurs in all kinds of situations and is not subject to forgetting. In this view, learning is social rather than solitary. [Informal View]

The official view looks at learning as memorization, while the informal view regards it as growth.

Learning is social and developmental. Learning is also a matter of identify, of how we see ourselves. Moreover, learning is vicarious; it is not a consequence of instruction and practice but of demonstration and collaboration. Social interactions bring about the growth of learning.

Methods can never ensure that students learn to read. Students must learn from people: from the teachers (formal and informal) who initiate them into the “readers’ club” and from the authors whose writing they read. It is the relationships that exist within the classroom that matter: students’ relationships with teachers and with each other and their relationships with what they are supposed to be learning—with reading and writing.

People who do not trust students to learn—or teachers to teach—will always expect a method to do the job.

The most productive way to deal with fundamental educational controversies might be to take them into every school and every community where they can be dissected, discussed, and honestly argued. The endless debate over teaching reading could serve to keep teachers—and the public at large—conscious of the profound importance and delicacy of the noble art of teaching.

Smith, F. (1992). Learning to read: The never-ending debate. Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 433-441.