Punishment Has Never Taught a Child to Read

Is it “won’t,” or “cannot yet”?

A child who reads a word well copies it in one look. She reads “garden,” keeps it in mind, and writes it down. A child who cannot read the word yet has a harder job. She copies it one letter at a time. She looks up, finds her place, writes a letter, and looks up again.

That is slow, and it is easy to lose the place. Some children stop. Some stare at the page. Some put their head down or start talking. From the front of the room, that looks like a child who won’t. To us, it looks like a child who cannot read the word yet.

It gets called defiance. Sometimes it gets called lazy. Nothing about a child stuck on that word looks lazy to us. Being bad is a choice. Being unable is not. Rules still matter. A child who reads the word and throws the pencil needs a behavior talk. A child who cannot read the word needs teaching first. We wrote more about why bright children who find reading hard get called lazy.

Why won’t a consequence teach a child to read?

Talking and reading grow in different ways. Children pick up talking by being around it. Reading is different. David Geary’s name for this is biologically secondary. Reading is a human invention, and the brain did not evolve for it. “We were never born to read,” as Maryanne Wolf put it. Stanislas Dehaene, Mark Seidenberg and the National Reading Panel land in the same place. Reading has to be taught, clearly and in order. Researchers still argue about the best way to teach it. That it has to be taught is where they meet. Here is how that teaching starts, one sound at a time.

Now look at what a consequence does. It tells a child that something went wrong. It does not show her the sounds in the word. It does not show her how those sounds link to letters. It might get one line copied today. It does not make tomorrow’s word any easier to read. Punishment has never taught a child to read, because punishment is not teaching.

Galuschka and colleagues (2014) reviewed 22 randomized trials. Each one tested a way to help children who struggle to read. Systematic phonics was the only approach to reach statistical significance. That means teaching letters and sounds step by step. A federal practice guide by Foorman and colleagues (2016) looked at early reading teaching. It rates the evidence as strong for two kinds of teaching. One links sounds to letters. The other teaches children to sound out, write and recognize words. Both are teaching. We put the main points on one page to save.

What should I ask the school instead?

When a reading gap is handled as behavior, the missing skill goes untaught. The consequence lands, and nobody teaches the sounds. That is not one teacher’s failure. It is how the system is set up to see a stuck child. The science isn’t the problem. The system that’s supposed to deliver it is.

Start at home tonight. Before any talk about trouble, ask your child to read the word out loud. Use the word from the task, or one like it. Keep it calm and short, more like a chat than a test. If she reads it easily and refuses anyway, that is worth a calm talk. If she stumbles, reading is the place to start. Then bring two questions to the school:

• What was my child taught in reading this week? Ask for the skill, not the page number.
• Which reading skill is being taught to my child directly? Ask who teaches it, and how often.

Ask as a partner, not an opponent. The answers show you if anyone is teaching the reading. Or only handling the behavior. If an answer is vague, ask again, kindly. “Working on behavior” is not a reading skill. A reading skill sounds like linking sounds to letters, or sounding out short words. Are you wondering if this is missed teaching or a reading difference? That guide walks through what tutoring studies found.