Tom Nicholson
Published Articles
Literacy, Family and Society, [In G. B. Thompson & T. Nicholson (Eds.) (1998). Learning to read: Beyond phonics and whole language. New York: Teachers College Press.]
Nearly all children learn to talk at home, but hardly any children learn to read at home. The reason is that language development is to a large extent biologically determined. Unless some major life trauma occurs, the child will acquire language, no matter what language is spoken at home, and no matter what home background the child comes from. Reading, however, is a cultural invention. The origins of speech go back 200,000 years, but the origins of writing go back only 5,000 years (Corballis, 1991). Language thus has an evolutionary base. It has emerged as part of the evolution of the human species, along with other abilities such as walking. So, while nearly everyone walks and talks, the relatively recent invention of writing has meant that reading and writing skills are not naturally acquired and thus have to be taught. They are not part of our evolutionary inheritance (Pinker, 1994).
Early Readers
This helps to explain why most children do not learn to read until they get to school. Durkin (1966) surveyed 9,568 school beginners in the United States and found that only 229 (2.4%) could read 18 words or more on a list she gave them to read. The list was made up of common words like "mother", "look" and "funny". How then did the 2.4% of early readers in Durkin's (1966) study learn to read? Durkin interviewed parents of the early readers in her study. She also interviewed parents whose children were not early readers. She wanted to find out what distinguished the early readers from the other readers. She found that parents of early readers tended to be proactive in reading. They spent more time with their children, read to them a lot, answered their questions, gave help with printing, spelling, sounds of letters, and identifying words. Parents of early readers reported that their children did a lot of writing. Durkin followed the early readers in her study during six years of school and found that they stayed ahead of their peers in reading through that period. This was a positive finding in the sense that parents sometimes worry about what will happen if their children learn to read before they go to school. Anbar (1986) mentions one concern that some parents have: "Am I creating a problem by helping her learn to read?" (p. 82). Anbar also raises a concern that preoccupies some teachers: "He [the early reader] is going to be bored in school." (p. 83). The results of Durkin’s research suggests that parents and teachers should be relaxed about children knowing how to read before they begin school, since they will not be disadvantaged.
Other research on early readers has revealed that such children often come from home backgrounds where their parents have some special reason for teaching their children to read. In an English study of 32 children who could read before they started school, Clark (1976) noted that some of their parents wanted their children to do well, and thus made special efforts to teach them to read. In one family, this was their first child after several attempts. The child was very special to them. In another family, the parents were not well educated but wanted their child to do better than them. Few of the mothers worked while their children were preschoolers. As a result, they were able to spend a lot of time with their children in literacy related activities.
Anbar (1986), in the United States, studied 6 children who could read before they started school. Their home environments were not run of the mill. In interviews, parents reported spending a great deal of time in reading and spelling activities. They read every day to their children, helped them with spelling, and played rhyming games, as in "'What rhymes with Mommy?' one of the mothers used to ask. (Her son's favorite response would be 'salami')" (p. 75). These parents had a huge range of materials: books, alphabet letters, flash cards, dictionaries, workbooks, electronic games, etc. Anbar reported that the motivation of the parents often stemmed from a special reason. These reasons were extremely interesting, so are quoted in detail here (Anbar, 1986):
Mark "Mark's parents' fears may have been the driving force behind their special interest in, and sensitivity toward, reading. The father remarked on his concern that Mark would become a poor reader like Mark's uncle. The mother was worried that, unless they did something specific about it, Mark would follow in his sister's footsteps, dropping out of school and 'doing nothing' in spite of his talents." (p. 80)
Sean "In the case of Sean, it appears that reading development became something of a hobby for his parents. ’Some parents build sand castles with their children; we made words with him,’ his mother explained. Perhaps because the father completed his formal education with only a high school diploma (and had a very high appreciation for education), Sean’s parents derived much satisfaction from their work with the child and from his early reading development." (p. 80)
Betty "In the case of Betty, early reading development seemed to have justified for the mother the resignation from her 12-year-long career." (p. 81)
Victor "In the case of Victor, the parents related how reading activities were used by them at first as a means of keeping the child physically calm. This requirement was imposed on them by the child's pediatrician due to the child's asthmatic condition." (p. 80)
Marna "In Marna's case, reading activities seem to have been the lifeline between the child and her parents, who felt guilty about leaving her with a sitter so much of the time. Since she was a very tense and restless baby, they also read frequently to her in order to calm her. In addition, they had another, very personal, reason to encourage Marna’s reading development: ’It was good to see that the child was not retarded,’ the mother explained, in reference to her fears that her late pregnancy might have caused developmental problems." (pp. 80-81)
These results suggest that early readers get a great deal of instruction at home. But is it possible that children will learn to read naturally if parents focus their efforts on reading aloud to their children on a regular basis? Wells (1985), in a study of 32 children, found a positive relationship between parents' reading aloud to children at home and their children's later reading progress in school. Yet Scarborough and Dobrich (1994) reviewed 31 studies on the effect of parents reading aloud to their children and found surprisingly little relationship between the amount of time parents spent reading to their children and their children's later reading development. Share, Jorm, Maclean, and Matthews (1984) gathered data on 500 kindergarten and 479 grade 1 Australian children. They also found little relationship between parents' reading to their children and their children's later reading achievement. Phillips and McNaughton (1990) studied a group of 10 New Zealand parents who were recruited by placing notices in libraries and bookshops in two middle-class suburbs. These parents spent three hours each day interacting with their 3- and 4-year-old children in literacy activities. The families mostly comprised two adults, and 1 or 2 children. Mothers did most of the reading of books to their children. They read an average of 4 books a day to their preschoolers, usually at bedtime. They visited the library often. They each had, on average, 300 children's books in their homes. Yet none of the children could read. Tests showed that on average the children could identify 13 letters and two words. But that was all, despite the very rich print environments of their home backgrounds.
Although home-literacy experiences do not correspond directly with reading success in school, they may do so indirectly in that parents who read to their children at night and buy them books are more likely to be middle-class. A child from such a background may fail to read, but not because of lack of home support. Indicators such as the amount of time that parents spend reading to their children and the number of books that children have at home may reflect differences in income. Children from middle-class homes are likely to have a better chance of school success than children from low-income homes, because they have more resources and parental know-how available to help them. The number of books in the home and the amount of reading parents engage in with their children may not be causal factors in learning to read. But they are an indirect measure of the extra benefits that come from being raised in a more affluent home environment.
Social Class and Reading
In Japan, where literacy levels are high, 36% of parents are already reading to their children when they are 12 months old (Sakamoto, 1976). In the United States, Adams (1990) has commented that reading to the very young is a middle-class phenomenon. It is very much what she did with her own child: "Since he was six weeks old, we have spent 30 to 45 minutes reading to him each day" (p. 85). Similar experiences have been recounted by others who have reported on the reading development of their children (Bissex, 1980; Lass, 1982, 1983).
In contrast, Teale (1986) surveyed 24 preschoolers in low-income families in the United States and found that their parents hardly ever read to them. He reported that they were read to on average five times a year. Feitelson and Goldstein (1986) studied 102 Israeli families. The researchers selected 51 families from schools where achievement was poor and 51 from schools where achievement was high. In the low-achieving schools, all parents in their sample had not progressed beyond primary school and were from Near Eastern or North African countries. In the high-achieving schools all parents in the sample were high school graduates from European or English speaking countries. The survey data showed that kindergartners attending schools with high achievement levels had an average of 54 books in the home and were read to for half-an-hour each day even from an early age. In contrast, children from low-achieving schools did not own any books and were not read to at all.
In New Zealand, differences in home reading experiences were studied by Gibbons(1980) in a small sample of eight preschool children (4-year-olds). She categorized them as either 100-book kids or 1,000-book kids. She calculated the "1,000" by totaling the number of stories they would have been read by their parents if they had been read just one story each night from the time they were 12 months old, through to their fifth birthday. Gibbons found significant differences between the 100- and 1,000-book children in pre-reading skills, such as knowledge of the alphabet and ability to retell stories that had been read aloud to them.
Differences in home background experiences were also noted by Nicholson (1980) in a survey of 689 parents who participated in a course on helping their children to read. Questionnaire responses revealed that some parents were unable to provide the print environment that was possible in middle-class homes. The reasons were economic. To get to libraries, parents need transport; to buy children's books, parents need disposable income. Here are the written comments of a parent who had to use public transport to attend the reading course at her local play center:
Leave home at 8.30 am with two toddlers to wait for school bus in frosts. Arrive at school. Wait in play center [at] which I had to light old-fashioned stove for heat. Meantime, baby is crying of cold. So I couldn't stand my children getting cold. So rather than face a freezing cold play center I dropped out as did other mothers without cars. (Nicholson, 1980, p. 19)
Some parents also felt lacking in information about what books to get for their children. Here is one written note from a parent:
Yes I have two children how [sic] need books bad. They are very backwood [sic] in their readying [sic] at school. How do I get the right books for them? I am [sic] give you my name and address would you let me know about the books for my children I hope so. (Nicholson, 1980, p.21)
Although many children from low-income backgrounds have low levels of reading achievement, some do not. There are well-known figures in history who were excellent readers and writers, yet came from humble backgrounds. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States during the American Civil War, came from a background of rural poverty. D.H. Lawrence became a famous novelist, though his father was a coal miner.
My students and I recently conducted a case study of a 5-year-old early reader. He started school with a 7- to 8-year-old reading level and above-average intelligence as measured by a test of receptive vocabulary. Yet he had just been enrolled at a school in Otara, one of the poorest areas of Auckland. He came from a home in which Samoan, Maori, and English were all spoken. Our interviews with the parents revealed that they had not directly instructed their child in how to read. Like parents interviewed by Anbar (1986), they provided him with a rich home environment. His mother had taken a child development course where she learned about reading books to her baby while he was in the womb. She often left him in his cot while an audiotape of a book was playing. His mother recalled making flashcards to create words and sentences. He was sounding out words and reading words on signs when he was 4 years of age. Here is an extract from the parent interview:
I was quite surprised. We'd be driving along the motorway and he'd start reading signs. He'd say something like, 'Dad, what's a furniture sale?' And I'd say, 'Where did you see that?' And he'd say, 'On the shop'. We'd stop at lights and he'd be reading things off. And I'd be sitting there all quiet just waiting for the lights to go green, and he'd start reading.