“Strictly speaking …” There is need of a careful analysis of reading difficulties

“In our family, all its members, from the oldest to the youngest, have the same little weakness: reading.” Oh dear! Is this family affected by a reading and spelling weakness or even disorder, i. e., dyslexia, as it is technically known, the causes of which are the subject of controversial debate? Have they had to undergo appropriate testing procedures, including intelligence tests, after ruling out organic causes such as hearing loss or defective vision, as is common practice today? Or were, at the most, the general conditions of this family classified as unfavourable over several generations, or had the emotional and psychological pressure, the work and housing situation long been considered so precarious that, as a result, reading skills had suffered? Had they missed the opportunity to be included in support programmes or prescribed therapies at an early stage, as is recommended today? Are they therefore entitled to “disadvantage compensation” and more time for solving tasks in exams? Are they allowed to take oral instead of written assessments? Or do they unfortunately belong to the group of so-called “illiterates” who, despite having attended school for many years, are so little able to read that they can hardly cope with the relevant demands of everyday life?

Forget the world while reading

No, it is the beginning of a story by Michael Ende that continues like this: “Hardly any of us can ever be persuaded to put our book aside for any reason, even in order to do something else that is urgent or cannot be postponed. This is not to say that these urgent and unpostponable things are not done. We just think that it is not at all necessary to abstain from reading for doing them.
  It’s perfectly possible to do one thing and not forego the other, is it not? I admit that this sometimes leads to one or another small mishap - but so what?”
  Well, that sounds exciting and makes you want to read on! The protagonists of the story are so engrossed in their reading that they lose sight of their own actions. Like the grandfather, who taps out his tobacco pipe in the flower vase instead of the ashtray, which he then drinks from in the belief that he is taking his cough medicine.
  Or the knitting grandmother who is shocked by the long hose that is curled up in the parlour (it should have been socks) and which – she thinks – has been forgotten by the fire brigade. Whether it is the painting father, the cooking mother, the sister on the phone, the lift-riding brother, the frog or the cat, they are all so engrossed in reading that they forget the world around them.
  So “strictly speaking ...”, as the title of the story says, it is about a family who have made reading their hobby. Would we not wish this to be true for all children and young people? However, it is well known that, despite many years of school attendance, a large number do not have the reading and writing skills that would enable them to organise their private and professional lives independently. The press may have reported tragic cases, such as that of an unskilled labourer in the Zurich Oberland who did not submit a tax return for years and whose income was always overestimated by the tax office, but for shame he never lodged an appeal against these tax assessments. But even then – in 2014 – the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) counted 800,000 people affected by a lack of reading skills and feared an increase in the coming years.
  The latest survey of the reading skills of our children and young people – determined by the Pisa study – is due to be published next
  December. In the last survey, the proportion of “weakest readers” had already risen to 25 per cent of the evaluated youngsters, which “according to experts means that half of 15-year-olds in Switzerland can only just cope with everyday life”, as the newspaper NZZ am Sonntag writes.¹ This makes it all the more important to look for the causes.

Sugar-coating instead
of the investigation of causes

It will not be necessary to collect figures again by participating in the so-called IGLU study (International Primary School Reading Survey), which tests the so-called reading skills of fourth-graders in 60 countries every five years. What is needed is not new studies from the ivory towers of universities, but rather a serious consideration of what previous surveys and practitioners in schools, teaching establishments and grammar schools have long recognised. By the way, also Germany has reason to be concerned, as the IGLU survey showed that one in four German fourth-graders cannot read properly. However, whether it is enough to spend a billion euros on promoting so-called reading skills seems more like a confectioner trying to save his failed cake by icing it instead of checking the ingredients of his recipe and his working methods.

Long standing cause for concern

In the last Pisa rankings for reading literacy, Switzerland was placed even behind Germany and Sweden. At the turn of the millennium, it had been the other way round. But even then, the proportion of young people with very poor reading skills was already worrying at 12 per cent. The countermeasures taken since then have obviously been misguided and are based on an inadequate analysis of the causes. In our society, we are confronted with writing and text countless times a day. Those of us who have difficulty deciphering a text and barely or not at all understand what it says are not only restricted in their everyday life and life goals, but are also deeply affected in their self-assessment of being valuable and equal human beings.

Once again:
Federalism in the dock

In the 2006 referendum, an education article was included in the Swiss Federal Constitution, which promised certain standardised regulations such as the same school levels for the whole of Switzerland. It was accepted by many voters, in the belief that this would make it easier to move from one canton to another. The story was similar when it came to our Curriculum 21, which is still highly controversial today. Many responsible voters only realised afterwards that the promised simplifications did not materialise, but that the new regulations were the first steps towards a centralised educational dictate. Since then, the aim has been to gradually disempower the cantons and centralise education. It is therefore downright soporific when federalism is used once again as a whipping boy to explain the reading predicament, as in the article in question, because this prevents the introduction of targeted measures to remedy the reading plight in Switzerland. Moreover, cantonal sovereignty in the field of education would be a guarantee that measures could be taken quickly and specifically in line with the circumstances and needs of the respective cantons.

Migrant children – yes, but …

It is true that in recent years the number of children who do not speak German as their mother tongue (first language) has risen continuously. So why not look there for the reason for the reading plight? Of course, there is a pedagogical problem here, because these children need in-depth and intensive German lessons. A few years ago, there were the so-called small classes E, in which children newly resident in Switzerland could acquire the necessary German language skills in order to be able to follow the lessons in the regular classes. It was a blessing for every child to first receive intensive support and human guidance in a foreign country. Now most of them have to find their way in a regular class right from the start, with a few additional German lessons – instead of first familiarising themselves with the new language as well as learning their mother tongue correctly – and spend lessons in primary school acquiring a few language fragments in English and French. All this despite the futility of this endeavour (for all children), as independent studies have shown.²

More sugar-coating

If, as in the above-mentioned article, heterogeneity in the classroom is today cited as a possible cause and differentiated teaching as the right answer, then this is another example of inadequate analysis of the situation. However, some reflection would indeed be important! The heterogeneity in school classes, caused by the so-called integration/inclusion of all children in the mainstream class, as well as individualised teaching are in fact among the causes of the reading crisis. They prevent a linguistically stimulating learning process, the modelling effect of linguistically adept children, a training ground for joint discussions and joint, unifying reading – in short, learning from and with each other. This, too, is a false ingredient in the cake batter that is to be covered by sugar icing.

Learning blockade in the ivory tower

When it comes to analysing the current problem, there seem to be certain learning blockades. One of these is the untouchability of digital learning. Some time ago, Sweden had the courage to take research findings on the causes of its reading difficulties documented by the IGLU study seriously (and to reject the financially powerful education corporations). It banned the digital devices previously used as teaching aids, above all tablets, from the classrooms of primary school pupils and is planning a return to books in the classroom. A renowned research team had proven that reading on a screen has a negative impact on reading comprehension and that texts on a screen are read more quickly and superficially, thus hindering in-depth learning.³ But here too, our “experts” at universities, who are unfortunately often far removed from practice, wave this off with the “old-fashioned” argument that it is the schools’ job to teach skills for digital reading (tomorrow already outdated!), and to impart the sensible use of devices and the ability to read digital texts critically …

Conclusion:
More attention is needed

The reading plight in Switzerland cannot be remedied by superficial research into the causes which does not dare to touch hot potatoes: There are the reforms of the last 30 years, which have left hardly a stone unturned in our school system. Scientifically based pedagogy – founded on a personalised view of humanity based on the human sciences – has been sacrificed to the demands of the education industrial complex. This is against the backdrop of a biologistic view of humanity that reduces children’s difficulties in reading to brain dysfunctions. Since then, the fact has been neglected or even negated that reading weaknesses and disorders are often caused by unsuitable methods, some of which are now even banned⁴, where children are left to their own devices, without competent and empathetic guidance from a teacher, when learning the complex and demanding process of reading and writing. In this way, they internalise incorrect learning strategies and mistakes in the process.

“Strictly speaking …”

The reading family in Michael Ende’s story did not have these problems. No, they all enjoyed reading, loved books and forgot the world around them like the older sister, who eagerly pressed the telephone receiver to her ear: “As we all know, telephones were invented especially for fourteen-year-old sisters, because without the receiver to their ear, all fourteen-year-old sisters in the world would die from lack of news as surely as divers without breathing apparatus would die from lack of air. But our fourteen-year-old sister also has a book in her hand in which she is reading.” Multitasking? No, by mistake she had not dialled a number. “After about two hours, she asks in passing: ‘Tell me, who is this Ding-ding you’ve been talking about all this time?’”
  Should we not enable our children and young people to make more reading experiences like this again? And should we, for example, take seriously what Afra Sturm, professor of didactics at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, dares to say in the newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”: “If the proportion of very poor readers increases again, we will have to fundamentally question the way we teach pupils to read”.⁵ Why wait?  •

¹ Schöpfer, Linus. “Für den Alltag nicht gewappnet”: Die Schweiz hat eine Leseschwäche” (Not equipped for everyday life: Switzerland has a reading weakness). In: NZZ am Sonntag of 19 November 2022. https://magazin.nzz.ch/nzz-am-sonntag/kultur/die-schweiz-verlernt-das-lesen-und-wird-anfaellig-fuer-fake-news-ld.1765095?reduced=true
² Pfenninger, Simone E.; Singleton, David. 2017. Beyond Age Effects in Instrumental L2 Learning: Revisiting the Age Factor (2008–2017). Multilingual Matters.
³ Perret, Eliane. “Unesco: Kein Bildschirm kann je die Menschlichkeit eines Lehrers ersetzen” (Unesco: ‘No screen can ever replace the humanity of a teacher’). In: Current Concerns of 29 August 2023. https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2023/nr-18-22-august-2023/unesco-kein-bildschirm-kann-jemals-die-menschlichkeit-eines-lehrers-ersetzen
⁴ Schmoll, Heike. “Fehler sollen wieder korrigiert werden.” (We should go back to correcting mistakes.) In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 24 April 2019. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/einige-bundeslaender-verbieten-lehrmethode-lesen-durch-schreiben-16155156.htm
⁵ NZZ am Sonntag of 19 November 2023