Geraldine Rodgers

Teacher, Author, Researcher

Geraldine Rodgers spent most of her life dedicated to the cause of literacy. She wrote 3 books in her 90’s, including the book “What Is the Real Reason?” at age 99. Gerry turned 100 in December of 2025. The three books she wrote in her 90’s are shown below.

Geraldine was a secretary for the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey from 1944 - 1962.

She taught elementary school from 1963 to 1986 in Wayne, New Jersey.

Education

B.S., Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rutherford, New Jersey, Magna Cum Laud, 1963

M.A., William Paterson College, Wayne, New Jersey, 1967

Sabbatical

Geraldine took a two-week leave from the Wayne schools in 1971 to visit Open Classroom schools in England.

She later took a six-months’ sabbatical leave from the schools of Wayne, New Jersey in 1977-1978, during which she observed first grade classes and tested second grade classes in Europe and in the United States. She observed beginning classes in England in 1971, and first and second grades in the United States, Luxembourg, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and France in 1977-1978.

Rodgers is notable for her research and writing on beginning reading and the rating scale she developed. She developed a rating scale for beginning reading books, which she explained and used in her History of Beginning Reading. She also developed a theory that there are two types of readers, one from each end of her scale.

The Reading Rating Scale

Rodgers describes her rating scale in her History of Beginning Reading:

In her History of Beginning reading, she explained her rating scale in more detail and assigned her scale to books used for reading instruction throughout history. A few of these books and their ratings are shown in the table below.

Noah Webster’s American Spelling book, also known as the Blue Backed Speller, is included because it was used to teach both reading and spelling with syllabic phonics. Its use to teach reading is explained on 40L’s  Webster’s Way page.

Reading Scale Code of selected books from Rodgers’ History of Beginning Reading

Phonics vs. Whole Language in history

Rodgers also identified a period of whole language teaching from 1826 - 1876, focused on elocution.  This period other historical reading dates are shown on 40L’s History of Reading page.

“The “new” way was to drill whole classes, over and over, on sections as short as a paragraph or even a sentence to promote elocutionary tones and “meaning.” A la William Scott Gray in the 20th century Scott, Foresman series, the “new” method was to question the children endlessly on these little snippets of reading matter that they repeated over and over and over.

To my knowledge, no public attention has ever been drawn to this enormous fakery in place by 1835 of replacing real reading instruction and practice with wheel-spinning and useless activity.

The change from meaningful reading practice (“sound”) to elaborate fakery (“meaning”) was promoted by change-agents on both sides of the Atlantic. The change appears to have started in the early nineteenth century, to have been institutionalized in America in 1826, and to have been in full and rank flower by the 1830’s on both sides of the Atlantic....They did it on the fake grounds that they were promoting “meaning.” In its place they recommended what amounted to a lot of gargling exercises to “train” children’s “organs” (“elocution”) and hosts of pointless questions on the “meaning” of simple, self-evident material." (3)

Rodgers' The History of Beginning Reading is comprehensive and well research and documented. She states,

Sabbatical Research

Geraldine's sabbatical research found that phonics was superior to whole language in both European and American classrooms.

“On my test which is at grade level 2.3, at a time of the year in Europe which was roughly grade 2.3, 90% of the phonic-trained children were at instructional level, and 96% passed above thefrustration level.

The more global [whole language] European classes showed a marked inferiority. Only 74% were at instructional level and 86.5% passed above the frustrational level. What was notable was the degree of extreme failure of a few children in the global groups. Of the total global sample, 2.5% scored below 70% accuracy, but none of the European phonics group scored that low. 

For comparison, in the American group, and despite the fact that learning to read English is a more demanding task for beginners, only 1.4% of the phonics children read below 70% in January....

Only 8% of the American phonics classes read below the frustrational level, but 25% of the sight word global group, or one out of every four children in those classes! Yet it should be pointed out emphatically, once again, that the test only concerns very high frequency words and in no way shows how children could perform when sounding out unfamiliar words.” (5)

Rodgers also found that the more phonics based a program was, the better the results:  

“Where individual groups were compared, when one group had more phonic background than another (a higher Code number), the same superiority was demonstrated. For instance, the Scott, Foresman Code 2 groups which did not use the Scott, Foresman workbook, “Letters and Sounds,” did markedly worse than Class U.S. 27, the Code 5 Scott, Foresman group which did use the phonics workbook (a relative weak analytic approach which did, however teach short vowels.) ” (6)

This table below shows a sampling of her review of beginning reading programs during her sabbatical research, with her code scores for each program, with code 1 pure meaning and code 10 pure sound.

Reading Scale Code of selected books from Rodgers’ Why Jacques Can Read

Brain research on reading at the time also led her to believe that there were two types of reading, each processed on a different side of the brain.

“ Logically, therefore, if the reading of Kana sound-bearing script, like the reading of alphabetic sound-bearing print, is processed through the left angular gyrus area of the brain, the reading of Kanji meaning-bearing script (and the reading of its equivalent, sight-words taught by the “meaning” method) should be processed through the mirrored counterpart, the RIGHT angular gyrus area of the brain. The left angular gyrus areas and the right angular gyrus areas in human brains should then provide the anatomical basis for processing the only two types of visual writing which are possible for humans: sound-bearing, or meaning-bearing. ” (9)

A central part of her many books and online articles is this difference, and the idea of not just two types of teaching, whole language vs. phonics, but also two types of readers, meaning based or sound based.

Bibliography

Works available online:

1986 Geraldine E. Rodgers, Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives

1995, 2001. The History of Beginning Reading

1996. The Hidden Story, selected quotes

2003. The Born-Yesterday Word of the Reading Experts

2004. Why Noah Webster’s Way Was the Right Way

Works available for purchase:

1995, 2001. The History of Beginning Reading, Vol 1 ISBN 978-1588209726

1995, 2001. The History of Beginning Reading, Vol 2 ISBN 978-1588209733

1995, 2001. The History of Beginning Reading, Vol 3 ISBN 978-1588209740

1996, 2000. The Hidden Story. ISBN 978-1585000227

2004. Why Jacques, Johann and Jan Can Read. ISBN 978-1589613279

2007. The Case for the Prosecution, in the Trial of Silent Reading Comprehension Tests, Charged with the

Destruction of America's Schools ISBN 978-1589399952

2018. The Critical Missed Step ISBN 978-1546228059

2022. On the Miss Middleton Effect ISBN 978-1665565561

2025. What is the Real Reason? ISBN 979-8823055536

Geraldine Rodgers kept working until age 99, when she wrote her last book. She spent most of her adult life committed to her vision of making the historical reasons for illiteracy available to the public. 

It’s never too late to make a difference.