Whole-Word Reading Began in Boston in 1844

By Susan Hikel-Greenleaf
October 2001

Back in 1844, Boston schools had a reading problem due to the use of a new “whole-word” reading program in the primary grades.

The Boston Masters criticized the proponent of the program, Horace Mann, who was then Secretary of Education. Fortunately, the Boston schools were able to get rid of the whole-word method. But, believe it or not, that discredited teaching method is still used today.

This surprising discovery was made by Dr. Sam Blumenfeld, Waltham.

Before coming to Massachusetts, Blumenfeld had been a book-publishing editor in New York City. Desiring to write books full-time, a friend suggested he write a book on how to start a private school. In doing research for his book, How to Start a Private School and Why We Need One, he discovered the origin of “whole word” reading.

In 1955, Why Johnny Can’t Read by Rudolf Flesch was published. It created quite a sensation. “In it,” says Blumenfeld, “Flesch revealed that the reason why American children couldn’t read is because the professors of education had changed the way reading is taught in American schools. When I realized in 1970 that the reading problem had not been solved by Flesch’s book and that the educators were still using the whole-word method, I realized that parents needed to know why the problem had not been solved. That’s why I wrote my second book, The New Illiterates.”

In the early 1930s, the professors of education threw out the alphabetic-phonics method from the schools and put in its place a sight-reading method or whole-language approach that teaches children to read English as if it were Chinese, says Blumenfeld. After Flesch’s book, parents reacted very strongly and demanded phonics be reinstituted but educators refused to be moved and they continue to this day to advocate the whole-word approach.

In whole-word methodology each word is looked at as a whole configuration and not as a phonetically structured word that can be broken up into syllables. “The children have a very weak grasp of the phonetic principle, so that they can’t even apply whatever phonetic knowledge they have to their reading. That’s why if you ask kids if they like to read books, they say only if they have to, because it’s too difficult to keep guessing the words they don’t know. Today, it’s extraordinary to see a young person reading a newspaper,” says Blumenfeld.

In researching The New Illiterates, Blumenfeld discovered the origin of the whole-word method. It was invented by the Reverend Thomas H.Gallaudet, director of the school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, in the 1840s. Since the deaf could not hear language, Gallaudet taught them to read by using whole words and pictures. He achieved a modicum of success with this method, and so he thought that the method could be adapted for use by normal children. He wrote a whole-word primer, which was adopted by the Boston primary schools in 1837. It caused a “horrible” reading problem,” says Blumenfeld. Fortunately, the Boston Masters were able to get rid of the Gallaudet method but it was adopted by the newly created teachers college, which considered it a legitimate way to teach reading.

“After I told parents what was wrong with the way schools were doing things, I realized that parents had to know how to teach their children to read correctly at home. So I wrote How to Tutor, which teaches parents how to instruct their children in the three Rs.” From that book Blumenfeld developed a phonics reading program called, Alpha-phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers. It is an intensive phonics program and it has been enormously successful in teaching thousands of children to read at home. The program is very popular with home-schoolers and among some teachers of immigrant children and adults who are learning to read and speak English.

Blumenfeld’s next book, Is Public Education Necessary? is a history of how government got involved in education. “I wanted to find out why the government got involved in education so early in our history. There is no mention of education in the U.S. Constitution because the founding fathers did not believe that education was a function of government. They gave us limited government, which, unfortunately, has been expanded far beyond what the founding fathers considered to be the legitimate function of government. The reason for the government takeover, it turned out, had nothing to do with literacy or economics. It was philosophical, promoted by the Harvard Unitarians, who wanted to get Calvinism out of the schools. They believed that a secular government system could do that.”

Blumenfeld continued, “Prior to government schools, everyone could read because the most important aspect of education in colonial days was the ability to read the Bible. The Bible was considered the basis of this new civilization in the wilderness. And the men who came here were very concerned about their religion being passed on to the next generation. So they insisted that everybody could at least read the Bible; and, of course, if you could read the Bible you could read everything else,” he said.

Next he published, NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, which Blumenfeld said completes the story of our government’s involvement in education. “Through my history of the National Education Association and the progressive movement, I expose the whole plan to dumb down America in order to turn it into a Socialist society. There is a deliberate plan to shift the emphasis away from the development of the intellect and academic skills to the development of social and manual skills. All of this has been engineered by educators who are very well organized,” he said.

Over the years, Blumenfeld has traveled and lectured in all fifty states as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.  He is a favorite speaker at home-school conventions. “I’ve been able to measure the growth of the home school movement just on the size of the audience. For example, when Massachusetts had its first home school convention about twelve years ago, there were only about three hundred attendees and it was held in a church basement. This year we had to rent the convention center in Worcester and there were over three thousand parents in attendance.” Blumenfeld believes many more people will be home schooling in the future and that’s the reason for his latest book, Home Schooling, A Parent’s Guide to Teaching Children. 

“Last July there was an article in the Boston Globe about Boston’s reading problem,” says Blumenfeld. “Mayor Menino had launched a literacy program five years ago in an attempt to wipe out illiteracy among Boston’s school children. Now five years later, they’re still talking about this reading problem. The educators now tell us that they have a new ‘balanced’ reading program which combines whole language with phonics. That’s the worst of all possible worlds because you totally confuse a child as to what kind of reading system we have.

“The only way we can find out how the schools of Boston are teaching reading is to go into them and talk to the teachers and look at the books,” said Blumenfeld. “But whether or not we can get a good intensive phonics program into the schools is problematic.”

Professor Blumenfeld’s books are available at Amazon.com or through the Paradigm company at  208-322-4440, Boise, Idaho, or visit his website, www.howtotutor.com.

See MassNews archives at “phonics” for feature stories about phonics in Massachusetts schools.