48.Name Sounds, Not Things: The Underground HIstory of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Name Sounds, Not Things 

So how was the murder of American reading ability pulled off? I'll tell you in a second, 
but come back first to classical Greece where the stupendous invention of the alphabet by 
Phoenicians was initially understood. The Phoenicians had an alphabetic language used 
to keep accounts, but the Greeks were the first to guess correctly that revolutionary power 
could be unleashed by transcending mere lists, using written language for the permanent 
storage of analysis, exhortation, visions, and other things. After a period of experiment 
the Greeks came up with a series of letters to represent sounds of their language. Like the 
Phoenicians, they recognized the value of naming each letter in a way distinct from its 
sound value — as every human being has a name distinct from his or her personality, as 
numbers have names for reference. 

Naming sounds rather than things was the breakthrough! While the number of things to 
be pictured is impossibly large, the number of sounds is strictly limited. In English, for 
example, most people recognize only forty- four. 1 

The problem, which American families once largely solved for themselves, is this: in 
English, a Latin alphabet has been imposed on a Germanic language with multiple non- 
Germanic borrowings, and it doesn't quite fit. Our 44 sounds are spelled 400+ different 
ways. That sounds horrible, but in reality in the hands of even a mediocre teacher, it's 
only annoying; in the hands of a good one, a thrilling challenge. Actually, 85 percent of 
the vast word stock of English can be read with knowledge of only 70 of the phonograms. 
A large number of the remaining irregularities seldom occur and can be remastered on an 
as-needed basis. Meanwhile a whole armory of mnemonic tricks like "If a 'c' I chance to 



spy, place the 'e' before the 'i'" exists to get new readers over the common humps. 
Inexpensive dictionaries, spell-check typewriters, computers, and other technology are 
readily available these days to silently coach the fearful, but in my experience, that "fear" 
is neither warranted nor natural. Instead, it is engendered. Call it good business practice. 

Also, communicating abstractions in picture language is a subtlety requiring more time 
and training to master than is available for most of us. Greeks now could organize 
ambitious concepts abstractly in written language, communicating accurately with each 
other over space and time much more readily than their competitors. 

According to Mitford Mathews: 2 

The secret of their phenomenal advance was in their conception of the nature of a word. 
They reasoned that words were sounds or combinations of ascertainable sounds, and they 
held inexorably to the basic proposition that writing, properly executed, was a guide to 
sound, reading. A number of other good treatments are available for the newcomer. 

Learning sound-sight correspondences comes first in an alphabetic language. 
Competence with the entire package of sounds corresponding to alphabet symbols comes 
quickly. After that anything can be read and its meaning inquired after. The substantial 
speaking vocabulary kids bring to school (6,000 — 10,000 words) can now be read at 
once, and understood. 

When the Romans got the alphabet through the Etruscans they lost the old letter names so 
they invented new ones making them closer to the letter sounds. That was a significant 
mistake which causes confusion in novice readers even today. Through conquest the 
Latin alphabet spread to the languages of Europe; Rome's later mutation into the 
Universal Christian Church caused Latin, the language of church liturgy, to flow into 
every nook and cranny of the former empire. 

The Latin alphabet was applied to the English language by Christian missionaries in the 
seventh century. While it fused with spoken English this was far from a perfect fit. There 
were no single letters to stand for certain sounds. Scribes had to scramble to combine 
letters to approximate sounds that had no companion letter. This matching process was 
complicated over centuries by repeated borrowings from other languages and by certain 
massive sound shifts which still occupy scholars in trying to explain. 

Before the spread of printing in the sixteenth century, not being able to read wasn't much 
of a big deal. There wasn't much to read. The principal volume available was the Bible, 
from which appropriate bits were read aloud by religious authorities during worship and 
on ceremonial occasions. Available texts were in Latin or Greek, but persistent attempts 
to provide translations was a practice thought to contain much potential for schism. An 
official English Bible, the Authorized King James Version, appeared in 1611, preempting 
all competitors in a bold stroke which changed popular destiny. 



Instantly, the Bible became a universal textbook, offering insights both delicate and 
powerful, a vibrant cast of characters, brilliant verbal pyrotechnics and more to the 
humblest rascal who could read. Talk about a revolutionary awakening for ordinary 
people! The Bible was it, thanks to the dazzling range of models it provided in the areas 
of exegesis, drama, politics, psychology, characterization, plus the formidable reading 
skills it took to grapple with the Bible. A little more than three decades after this 
translation, the English king was deposed and beheaded. The connection was direct. 
Nothing would ever be the same again because too many good readers had acquired the 
proclivity of thinking for themselves. 

The magnificent enlargement of imagination and voice that the Bible's exceptional 
catalogue of language and ideas made available awakened in ordinary people a powerful 
desire to read in order to read the Holy Book without a priest's mediation. Strenuous 
efforts were made to discourage this, but the Puritan Revolution and Cromwell's 
interregnum sent literacy surging. Nowhere was it so accelerated as in the British 
colonies in North America, a place already far removed from the royal voice. 

Printing technology emerged. Like the computer in our own day, it was quickly 
incorporated into every corner of daily life. But there were still frequent jailings, 
whippings, and confiscations for seditious reading as people of substance came to realize 
how dangerous literacy could be. 

Reading offered many delights. Cravings to satisfy curiosity about this Shakespeare 
fellow or to dabble in the musings of Lord Bacon or John Locke were now not difficult to 
satisfy. Spelling and layout were made consistent. Before long, prices of books dropped. 
All this activity intensified pressure on illiterate individuals to become literate. The net 
result of printing (and Protestantism, which urged communicants to go directly to the 
Word, eliminating the priestly middleman), stimulated the spread of roving teachers and 
small proprietary and church schools. A profession arose to satisfy demand for a popular 
way to understand what uses to make of books, and from this a demand to understand 
many things. 



'The "problem" with English phonics has been wildly exaggerated, sometimes by sincere people but most 
often by those who make a living as guides through the supposed perils of learning to read. These latter 
constitute a vast commercial empire with linkages among state education departments, foundations, 
publishers, authors of school readers, press, magazines, education journals, university departments of 
education, professional organizations, teachers, reading specialists, local administrators, local school 
boards, various politicians who facilitate the process and the U.S. offices of education, defense and labor. 

2 Mitford Mathews, Teaching to Read Historically Considered (1966). A brief, intelligent history of reading 
A number of other good treatments are available for the newcomer. 



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