Nonfiction work

By: Rudolf Flesch

Date: 1981

Source: Flesch, Rudolf. Why Johnny Still Can't Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools. New York: Harper & Row, 1981, 1–5.

About the Author: Rudolf Flesch (1911–1986) was an expert on literacy and writing. He was born in Vienna and became a citizen of the United States in 1938. He earned a B.S. (1940), M.A. (1942), and a Ph.D. (1943) from Columbia. Flesch, who believed that the phonetic approach was the best way to teach reading, wrote Why Johnny Can't Read in 1955.

Introduction

Rudolf Flesch's 1955 Why Johnny Can't Read examined the crisis in teaching reading as he saw it. His companion volume, Why Johnny Still Can't Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools, published in 1981, reiterates his concern with the contemporary methods of teaching reading in the elementary...