As you wouldn’t be reading The Well-read Naturalist if you weren’t interested in reading, it is highly likely that you have at one time or another come across the long-standing debate regarding how reading actually takes place and how it should be taught. Indeed, this may well be a subject in which you have a deep and abiding interest. I know I certainly do; which is why a recently released interview with Prof. Adrian Johns regarding his new book The Science of Reading; Information, Media, and Mind in Modern America so readily caught and held my attention.
The interview, Phonics vs. Whole Word: The Science of Reading, with Adrian Johns (Ep. 117), was made possible and brought to the world by the University of Chicago’s very well done Big Brains podcast (a long-standing subscribed podcast in my own listening feed). Examining how people read, how reading has variously been taught, and how public arguments around research into reading played a significant role in the drawing of battle lines in the American culture wars and how the associated rhetoric from skirmishes therein have worsened the anti-science tendencies plaguing not only the U.S. but many other nations as well, Dr. Johns discoveries and analyses as presented in the interview are well worth giving ear by all those of us who hold the written word to be of vital importance not only in our own lives but for the societies in which we life as well.
