Why Johnny Can't Read

That's 2025.

Uh, in 1955, Rudolf Flesch wrote the book Why Johnny Can't Read.

I ac-actually have a copy right here in front of me because it happened in 1955, which we're doing a lot of research on right now for Christmas in America.

Professor Flesch, who was, uh, an esteemed PhD, uh, in library science, educator, writer, author, taught his own grandson how to read over the summer, teaching phonics, and in his studies on language, he noted that American education went off the rails and stopped teaching phonics all the way back to 1925.

Let me give you an example in history, Michael.

I was just rereading a book from 1955 yesterday called Why Johnny Can't Read.

A grandfather who happened to be a PhD libr-- uh, in, a lawyer and a PhD in library science found out that his grandson couldn't read, and so, in, in sixth grade.

So in the s- so he took the summer to teach his grandchild how to read, and in the process, he discovered that from 1925 forward in this country, for over the last hundred years, we have had a war about how to teach reading, the technology, the software, if you will, the algorithms of how to read.

Well, Kurt, I also have to blame just American culture in general.

I mean, you know, years ago, Rudolf Flesch wrote that book, Why Johnny Can't Read.

They've really, I mean, really, John Dewey declared war on the American mind about 100 years ago, and it's been going downhill ever since.

I mean, we've got to blame ourselves for the academic standards.

So it just makes the whole reading process very much harder.

This is one of the main criticisms in Rudolph Flesh and his best-selling book of the 50s, Why Johnny Can't Read.

Can I keep going on this side track? Because Michelle has something she wants to say, but I would like to interject here.

I want to know what Michelle thinks about pictures in these phonetic readers.

The reading or non-reading panic has been with us for the duration of my life in the United States, where I came from the Soviet Union as a teenager in 1980.

The following year, a book titled Why Johnny Still Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, a blistering critique of American reading education, became an instant bestseller, though not as big as its predecessor, Why Johnny Can't Read, published in 1955.

In the early 1980s, I remember buying paperback books that featured public service ads with the stark warning that one in five Americans can't read.

I was shocked until I figured out that can't read did not refer to actual illiteracy, but to lack of sufficient reading and writing skills to function in everyday life.