I’ve just received the October 1999 issue of Educational Leadership,
which is the official journal of the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development. It’s the voice of the education establishment
with all of its contradictions, controversies, educational disconnects
and out-and-out lies. The theme of this issue is “Redefining
Literacy.” Which means that we will be told that literacy is not what
we simple folk think it is. It’s a much more complex matter, far beyond
the ability of the layman to understand.
First, there are now all sorts of literacies: there is numeracy
literacy, science literacy, technological literacy, and information age
literacy. As for the teaching of reading, contrary to all this talk
about the return to phonics, Whole Language is about as entrenched as
ever, and any hope of teachers being taught how to truly teach
intensive, systematic phonics in the primary grades is wishful
thinking. What we are getting is “a synthesis of reading approaches,”
which has now become the norm. But those of us who have been fighting
in the literacy war for decades, never expected the educators to do
anything else but try to sabotage all efforts to get real phonics back
in the schools.
Yet, these same educators tell us that “10 million U.S. students are
classified as ‘poor’ readers. According to the NAEP 1998 Reading Report
Card, 68 percent of 4th graders in high poverty areas fall into this
category.” Yet, Marva Collins, in her private school in Chicago, has 100
percent of the students reading well, despite the fact that these
children come from high poverty areas. How come Marva Collins can
achieve such outstanding success while the public educators can’t? The
readers of Educational Leadership might have learned something if Mrs.
Collins had been invited to write an article on how well intensive,
systematic phonics works in her school. But that’s not what the
education establishment wants to hear.
Instead, we get an article extolling the great virtues of Whole
Language. In a piece entitled, “Whole Language Works: Sixty Years of
Research,” we read,
- [H]olistic approaches to literacy clearly remain our best
documented, most reliable, and most thoroughly proved ways to teach
reading to the majority of children. Whole Language works. The proof
is massive and overwhelming. Sixty years of research — yes, real
scientific research — conclusively show it to be a superior way to help
young people become skillful, lifelong readers and writers. This
thorough and comprehensive research consistently validates the
progressive approaches to teaching reading grouped under the name “Whole
Language.”
The proof is also massive and overwhelming that Whole Language
has caused a literacy catastrophe among the school children of
California. The March 7, 1996, issue of L.A. Weekly reported,
- In the eight years since whole language first appeared in the
state’s grade schools, California’s fourth-grade reading scores have
plummeted to near the bottom nationally, according to the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Indeed, California’s
fourth-graders are now such poor readers that only the children in
Louisiana and Guam — both hampered by pitifully backward education
systems — get worse reading scores.
It took a well-connected grandmother by the name of Marion
Joseph to get the state legislature to do something about it. She found
out about whole language from the way her grandchildren were being
taught in their school. She contacted several teachers to find out what
was going on. She relates, “I got, almost without exception, ‘Oh my
God, Marion, we are having a terrible time. The new reading method is
not working.’ If they tried to teach phonics or word attack skills to
the kids who weren’t getting it from the storybook and the invented
writings, compliance officers came in from their district office and
ordered a stop to it. It was terrible stuff, virtually a new religion,
a cult.”
So the California state legislature enacted a new law (California
Assembly Bill 1086) mandating training teachers in phonics, so that they
would be able to teach the children to read phonetically. But many
teachers are resisting. In fact, at the 44th Annual Convention of the
International Reading Association in San Diego earlier this year, a
group of teachers wore black T-shirts with the words “Banned in
California” printed across the front. An article entitled, “Redefining
the Reading Wars” relates,
- If a reading specialist or a researcher has a whole-language
philosophy, he or she is not allowed “in.” Instead, only those who
emphasize phonemic awareness and decoding skills above all else are
allowed to give workshops to California teachers. This McCarthy-like
militance — in effect, blacklisting — is just one example of how some
politicians, aided by the media’s need for sensational news and topics,
have kept the reading wars going.
Amazing how whole-language nuts can invoke McCarthy and
blacklisting as preventing them from exercising their Gaia-given right
to dumb down kids and create dyslexia! And there is no doubt that the
process will continue. The dirty work will be done at the preschool
level where children are taught to memorize sight words so that they
will develop a holistic reflex, the precursor to dyslexia.
An article on Preschool Learners reveals, “[T]eachers know, and
research confirms, that by the end of the year, kindergartners often can
read some common sight words. By the end of 1st grade, children can be
expected to possess a reading vocabulary of 300 to 500 words.” What
parents are not told is that learning that many words by sight will
guarantee that the child will become dyslexic. For a holistic reflex
prevents children from automatically seeing the phonetic structure of a
word. It is that blockage that causes the condition we call dyslexia.
The only redeeming article in the entire magazine is an interview
with Dr. Sally Shaywitz of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and
Attention. She has studied the brain mechanisms involved in reading.
About learning to read, she says,
- The most comprehensive reading program explicitly teaches about
the sounds of language. It teaches children that words can be broken up
into these smaller units of language, that the letters represent these
units of language — phonics. … All children can benefit from being
taught directly how to break up spoken words into smaller units and how
letters represent sounds.
But on page 41 of this same magazine, we are told by
whole-language experts to “avoid, whenever possible, a focus on isolated
skills, isolated letters, and isolated sounds.”
There seems to be a serious educational disconnect between
neuroscientists like Dr. Shaywitz and idiots wearing black T-shirts
proclaiming they are being blacklisted for believing in whole language.
Such is the confused state of reading instruction among our educational
leadership.
Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education,
including his reading programs, “How to Tutor” and “Alpha-Phonics.” The
Alpha-Phonics reading kit is available by calling 888-922-3000. “How to
Tutor” as well as “The Whole-Language/OBE Fraud” can be obtained from
the Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440 or via
Amazon.com.
