style="font-size:15px;"> • represented
• self-consciousness
• synthesis
• understanding
• unity
You should be able to easily decode and define all these vocabulary words. You have two of the big three literacy elements covered. Armed with your decoding and vocabulary abilities, read the following short passage from Immanuel Kant’s (1781/1998) Critique of Pure Reason, and try to correctly answer the low-level question asking for basic recall on the passage’s main idea:
A manifold, contained in an intuition which I call mine, is represented, by means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the necessary unity of self-consciousness; and this is effected by means of the category.
The main idea of this passage is:
a. Without a manifold, one cannot call an intuition “mine.”
b. Intuition must precede understanding.
c. Intuition must occur through a category.
d. Self-consciousness is necessary to understanding. (Hirsch, 2006)
While some philosophy majors with adequate exposure to Kant’s work might have easily read the passage and correctly answered the corresponding question, many of us probably floundered, because we lack this background knowledge on Kant. Perhaps, in reading the passage, you felt like the elderly lady from a commonly told anecdote about Einstein. She attended a lecture on relativity given by the famous scientist, and afterward, she approached him and remarked, “I understood all the words. It was just how they were put together that baffled me” (Hirsch, 2003, p. 17). Hirsch (2006) critiques teachers’ tendency to try to teach reading comprehension skills by simply giving struggling readers more time to summarize, classify, and find the main idea, which he says these readers cannot possibly do without the necessary background knowledge.
To fully comprehend the provided passage, we need to know that Kant was deeply interested in how people perceive the world (intuition) through organizing mindsets, paradigms, or manifolds that they build over time based on their experiences. Combining this knowledge with our decoding and vocabulary abilities gets us much closer to the correct answer: C.
Willingham (2017) advances that background knowledge is a primary cause of flatlining reading scores: “Students from disadvantaged backgrounds show a characteristic pattern of reading achievement in school; they make good progress until around fourth grade, and then suddenly fall behind. The importance of background knowledge to comprehension gives us insight into this phenomenon” (p. 128).
We could summarize our entire discussion so far with the following statement, which reflects the big three: after one has learned the mechanics of reading, “growth depends, more than anything, on our ability to build up students’ knowledge base and vocabulary” (Schmoker, 2018, p. 27). And so now we turn our attention to how the three elements interact.
The Synergy Required for Comprehension
While it is helpful to analyze the elements of decoding, vocabulary, and knowledge separately to fully understand each of them, we must also realize that they interact like factors in an equation, the result of which is comprehension. In fact, missing elements in literacy cause the same kind of imbalance that comes with a missing element in an equation. Remember what happens when you multiply by zero. You could have all the knowledge needed to comprehend a text you are reading, and you could know all the text’s words verbally, but if you don’t know the phonics of the text, you’ll multiply by zero, and the result is zero comprehension. Similarly, you could know how to decode the words of the text and know all their meanings, but without sufficient background knowledge, you will again multiply by zero, and the result is zero comprehension.
“Students from disadvantaged backgrounds show a characteristic pattern of reading achievement in school; they make good progress until around fourth grade, and then suddenly fall behind. The importance of background knowledge to comprehension gives us insight into this phenomenon” (Willingham, 2017, p. 128).
In contrast with a reader who struggles to decode words, advanced readers recognize them in milliseconds. For truly literate individuals, the elements of the big three blend seamlessly. Nearly instantaneous recognition is accompanied by equally instant association with meaning, and advanced readers have the knowledge to fully understand the context. The result is comprehension.
The Overskillification of Reading
Willingham claims that “the mistaken idea that reading is a skill—learn to crack the code, practice comprehension strategies—may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country” (as cited in Schmoker, 2011, p. 102). He and Schmoker (2011) note that “once students begin to read, they learn to read better by reading—just reading—not by being forced to endure more reading skill drills” (p. 103). And Lemov et al. (2016) point out simply, “Excellence in almost any academic subject requires strong reading” (p. 1).
Consider the construct of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA] & Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010), which devotes countless pages to listing the various skills within the standards, while a mere four pages, scattered throughout, address specific content. The standards leave the ultimate decisions of what knowledge to impart up to the schools. This makeup is in no way unique to the CCSS. Most other standards sets have the same dynamics: lots of discrete skills listed, with only passing references to specific knowledge. Is it any wonder, then, that teachers view literacy as a collection of various skills? Cognitive scientists and psychologists, however, take a very different view.
This reliance on skills is a very common theme emerging in the professional literature, which we will refer to as the overskillification of reading. This results in two dynamics, neither of which is helpful. First, overskillification encourages teaching reading skill by skill, rather than understanding that students achieve comprehension through many interdependent skills and abilities. Second, requiring students to learn lengthy lists of skills often precipitates numerous skills-based lessons that, sadly, take more and more time away from students actually reading. It’s like a football practice where you spend all your time doing worksheets and watching videos about specific skills, at the cost of actually taking to the field and integrating the skills in a scrimmage or actual game situation.
“Excellence in almost any academic subject requires strong reading” (Lemov et al., 2016, p. 1).
Reading comprehension strategies are an excellent example of overskillification. As Schmoker (2018) asserts, “Symbolism, figurative language, setting, mood, or structure have their place but are absurdly overemphasized in state standards” (p. 125) at the cost of truly authentic literacy. Daniel T. Willingham and Gail Lovette (2014) note that direct instruction on reading comprehension strategies does make a statistically significant difference in general reading performance, but they also note these skills “are quickly learned and don’t require a lot of practice.” They expressly state that there are “plenty of data showing that extended practice of [reading comprehension strategy] instruction yields no benefit compared to briefer review.” Hirsch (2006) notes that “six lessons in comprehension strategies yield as much or as little benefit as 25 lessons,” meaning that educators must be aware of the beneficial but “very limited efficacy of strategy-practicing.” As a result, Willingham
