|
||
Sensationalism, Politics, and Literacy:
| |
 |
By Rona F. Flippo
Ms. Flippo provides evidence that, despite extreme differences in philosophy, expert reading researchers do agree on a number of practices and contexts with regard to reading instruction and development. These must not be ignored, she warns, in favor of what the politicians think.
Illustration © 1998 by Jim Hummel |
AS A READING educator I am appalled by what I see in newspapers and popular magazines, in the reports of state boards, and in statements from legislatures all across the U.S. When the subject is reading and literacy, I am seriously concerned about the message that is being delivered.
Consider these headlines.
In essence, what these headlines promise, the accompanying articles deliver. The media and politicians blame whole language for California's (and other states') reading problems. Respected reading researchers are defamed and pitted against one another in the media. "Quick fix" solutions are proposed and acted on by state boards and legislatures, and phonics-based curricula, materials, and drills are being implemented in many places - indeed, mandated in some.
All this activity seems to be designed to get back to the way reading was taught in the "good old days." Most of the current proposals that enjoy political support consist primarily of throwing out recent decades of cognitive, linguistic, and sociocultural research in favor of embracing the beliefs of the past. Are we educators going to stand for this? Do we want politicians and the media to shape public opinion and then make decisions about reading education based on their own understandings, rather than on those of literacy researchers? If educators allow this to happen in the area of reading and literacy education, it will inevitably spread to science, math, and social studies as well.
Why Is This Happening?
If I were a political scientist or a policy analyst, I would probably provide a very sophisticated and complex answer to the question of why this is happening now. In fact, I'm sure that the answer is multidimensional and complex. But I'm just a reading researcher and teacher educator, and I view all the sensationalism and politics only from my own perspective. To me, it looks as though the "war" between whole language and phonics is little more than an opportunity for politicians to call attention to themselves and to trick the general public into believing that they are leading the way toward crucial and necessary changes in the public schools.
School issues are always "hot" issues because public schools affect everyone. Whether you are a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent, or a prospective parent of a child in public school, you are probably concerned. Even if your children are in private schools or if you do not have children, public school issues affect you. For instance, property values are inextricably tied to the public schools. A recent article in Smart Money magazine observes that "school district mania is a national obsession, driving up house prices in 'good' districts, deflating them in areas where the schools are seen as lacking, dominating the lives of anxious parents who worry that the 'wrong' decision will spell disaster for their children, not only in the competitive world of education, but in their careers, their lives."1 Is it any wonder that school issues offer such great opportunities for those with political ambitions?
So what really happened in California? A shock wave went through the state when the data from the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicated that California fourth-graders had tied for last place, along with those in Louisiana, on the nation's scorecard for reading. This set off a widespread reaction and a general search for something to blame for the state's poor showing. The philosophy of whole language (inaccurately referred to as a "method"), which California had espoused since 1987, came in for the strongest criticism. As a result, California, in its current back-to-basics mood, passed mandates requiring public schools to teach explicit phonics and spelling, to use skills-based basal reading programs that emphasize phonics instruction, and to retrain teachers in a phonics curriculum.
The questions that should be asked of California politicians aren't questions about philosophies of instruction.
Rather than take responsibility, face the facts, and "own up" to the many real factors that have contributed to California's public education problems, California politicians have made the whole-language philosophy their scapegoat. What's the actual situation? Although California's fourth-graders scored at the bottom of the 40 states that participated in the 1994 NAEP and scored near the bottom in the 1992 NAEP, there is no evidence that reading achievement in California has gotten appreciably worse since the state adopted a literature-based language arts framework in 1987. In fact, prior to embracing a whole-language philosophy, California schools were already in trouble. That is probably why Californians looked to whole-language ideas for the help they obviously needed.
California's crisis exists because of economic and sociocultural problems. Schools are overcrowded. There are tremendous numbers of children whose first language is not English. "In 1990, more than 137 different languages and cultures were represented in the state, making the sociocultural and linguistic context of California one of the most diverse in the world," according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.2 California ranks high in poverty, low in school libraries, low in public library access, and low in books available at home.3
The questions that should be asked of California politicians aren't questions about philosophies of instruction but questions such as these: How many dollars are spent per student? How many children per classroom? What about overcrowded schools? How many English-as-a-second-language students do you have, how has that number grown, and how are you educating them? How good were your reading test scores in 1986? Were your teachers well trained and committed to a whole-language philosophy of teaching and learning, or did the state just adopt this philosophy in 1987 because it sounded progressive and you needed to do "something," just as you need to do "something" now?
Other states have begun to follow California's lead. Organized back-to-phonics movements have been reported in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. The state superintendent in Illinois has been quoted as blaming whole language for that state's drop in reading scores. It has also been reported that parents in Illinois are asking for "phonics-only" charter schools.4 The president of the Maryland State Board of Education has been quoted as welcoming a movement toward phonics. Indeed, it has been reported that states are trying to pass laws mandating specific phonics courses for teacher education students. For example, under a bill proposed in North Carolina, certified teachers would have been required to pass a competency test in phonics or lose their teaching licenses.5 (However, that bill did not pass.) In Massachusetts, as a result of a call for a return to phonics by the chairman of the state board, a draft of the curriculum frameworks for English/language arts is being reworked to include a heavy emphasis on phonics instruction.6 Many other states are reported to be leaning toward phonics-based teaching and legislation, as well. Overall, switching philosophies and taking extreme positions, whether right or left, have become the panaceas of school reform in the U.S.
What Do Reading Researchers Know?
We know that decisions about reading instruction should not be set up as extreme "either/or" positions. We know that phonics and other necessary skills instruction can be taught by teachers who have whole-language philosophies. Indeed, many teachers with whole-language philosophies have been teaching phonics, as well as other skills of word recognition and analysis, as part of their reading programs. However, they teach these skills within the context of students' reading materials, rather than by focusing on them in isolation. We also know that neither "phonics" nor "whole language" is a method. Phonics is a word-analysis skill that involves the use of symbol/sound relationships; whole language is a philosophy that includes the belief that all language systems are interwoven. Finally, we know that teachers should not be required to teach by one approach alone. Teachers must have the latitude to use many approaches for their reading instruction in order to meet the needs and strategies of each child.
Even though each of us has an individual set of beliefs and philosophies regarding teaching, most of us agree with certain practices and contexts concerning learning and environments for learning. In the remainder of this article I wish to report some major agreements among experts in the field of literacy and reading research. I suggest that these agreements - which span philosophies - rather than the much publicized disagreements, should be considered by state boards and politicians as they propose, shape, and mandate their legislation. For instance, if reading experts generally agree that phonics should not be stressed and taught in isolation, then shouldn't politicians refrain from forcing this practice on teachers?
Educators in all fields must take charge of their instructional lives. The research provides us with the information we need to do so. Our understandings and preparation provide us with the means to analyze, discuss, and explain to the general public, to the media, and to politicians what we have learned from research. Let's do so and take charge of educational decisions in the political arena.
The Expert Study
My study of experts spanned 10 years. To gather these data I employed a Delphi technique, which involved asking selected reading experts, who represented the major schools of thought in literacy education, to specify what they believed teachers "should do" and "shouldn't do" in their classrooms to promote reading development. Each of the selected experts generated his or her own list of items anonymously, and the remaining experts agreed or disagreed, again anonymously, with each item on these lists. Each round was followed up with queries and interviews as needed.
After four complete rounds, I found that there were 33 practices and contexts that the experts agreed would tend to make learning to read difficult for children; they also agreed on 19 things that teachers could do to facilitate the children's learning to read. (Although they agreed with all 19 of these contexts and practices, they put qualifications on four of them.) These consensus items represent agreements shared by literacy experts across the differing philosophies.7 The experts included in my study are described briefly below.
The Findings
The list of agreements contains several redundant and overlapping items, and, upon examination, some of these items seem more important and central to reading than others. Therefore, here I will highlight the findings and generalize the agreements that seem most significant to the debates reported in the media and to what the state boards and legislatures have been acting on.
Practices that the experts agree would tend to make learning to read difficult for students include: 1) emphasizing only phonics instruction, 2) drilling children on isolated letters or sounds, 3) making sure that children do it correctly or not at all, 4) focusing on the single best answer, 5) making word-perfect oral reading the prime objective of your classroom reading program, 6) focusing on reading skills rather than on interpretation and comprehension, 7) using workbooks or worksheets with every reading lesson, 8) grouping readers according to ability, 9) following a basal program without making modifications, 10) teaching letters and words one at a time and making sure each new letter or word is learned before moving on to the next letter or word, and 11) expecting students to be able to spell correctly all the words they can read.
Practices that experts agree would tend to facilitate learning to read include: 1) bringing opportunities for reading, writing, talking, and listening together so that each feeds off and into the other; 2) talking about and sharing different kinds of reading; 3) focusing on using reading as a tool for learning; 4) making reading functional and purposeful; 5) developing positive self-perceptions and expectations concerning reading; 6) using a broad spectrum of sources and a variety of real books for student reading materials; 7) providing multiple and repeated demonstrations of how reading is done or used; and 8) using silent reading whenever possible and whenever appropriate to the purpose.
What Do These Agreements Really Mean?
These agreements mean that reading experts - from those with more traditional views to those with whole-language views and many in between - do not believe that the political solutions now being pushed are good for children or conducive to reading development. In fact, if you carefully review the major agreements among these diverse experts, you will see that the political solutions offered in California and other states where politicians are jumping on the "back to phonics" bandwagon are often counter to what literacy experts across philosophies believe to be facilitative practices and contexts.
Please understand that I am not saying that my study means that there is just one appropriate position or approach to teaching reading. On the contrary, decisions about reading instruction must be situational and should be based on the needs of the particular child and on the context. Teachers should be granted the professional latitude to use procedures, approaches, and adaptations that are appropriate for a particular child in a particular context. Of course, teachers must have a firm understanding of literacy and of research findings in order to make these informed instructional decisions.8 But legislatures won't achieve that end by dictating procedures, approaches, and practices with which most reading experts disagree.
In addition, while politicians across the country are forcing teachers to focus on phonics and skills instruction, they are all but ignoring comprehension and vocabulary (word knowledge). Another recent study, which focused on today's "hot" and "not hot" topics in reading research and practice, found that "hot" topics (topics that are receiving current, positive attention) are phonics, phonemic awareness, and skills instruction. The "not hot" topics (topics that are receiving negative or little attention) are comprehension, schema theory, and word knowledge/vocabulary.9
We in public education often find ourselves at the mercy of the policy makers who control policies, legislation, and the purse strings that keep our schools and colleges operating. Collectively, we are the largest group of education professionals and researchers in this nation. We must take charge.
We must use our expertise and the findings of research, including such studies as this one, to shape the public's understandings. Educational philosophies, in any area of the curriculum, should not become scapegoats for our politicians' inability to solve the economic and sociocultural problems of our states. Nor can we simply shed our belief systems in order to "fit in" with a more currently acceptable political viewpoint.
My study provides evidence that, despite extreme differences in philosophy, expert reading researchers do agree on a number of practices and contexts with regard to reading instruction and development.10 These must not be ignored in favor of what the politicians think. Leaders of public education and practitioners in schools and colleges nationwide need to assert themselves. Extreme political decisions about educational curricula - made by politicians without the consensus of the appropriate experts in our fields - will put our schools and our children's learning at risk.
2. Standards of Program Quality and Effectiveness for Professional Teacher Internship Programs for Multiple and Single-Subject Teaching Credentials with a (Bilingual) Crosscultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD/BCLAD) Emphasis (Sacramento: California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 1996), pp. 3-4.
3. Jeff McQuillan, "Whole Language Not to Blame in California," letter to the editor, Reading Teacher, December/January 1996/97, p. 32.
4. Christina Duff, "ABCeething: How Whole Language Became a Hot Potato in and out of Academia," Wall Street Journal, 30 October 1996, pp. A-1, A-10.
5. Laurel S. Walters, "As Reading Scores Plummet, States Get Hooked on Phonics," Christian Science Monitor, 18 April 1996, pp. 1, 4.
6. Dan French, "The Debate on Curriculums for Massachusetts Schools: Reform Is Undercut in Favor of Ideology," Boston Globe, 14 January 1997, p. A-15.
7. The main philosophies that these experts are often associated with can be categorized under three broad headings, as explained in Theodore L. Harris and Richard E. Hodges, eds., The Literacy Dictionary: The Vocabulary of Reading and Writing (Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1995), p. 256. First, the "whole-language" philosophy (sometimes called "reader-based" or "holistic" or "top-down") is a theoretical point of view that sees "reading comprehension [as beginning] with and . . . controlled by the experiences and expectations that the reader brings to text." Second, the "traditional" philosophy (sometimes called "text-based" or "specific skills" or "bottom-up") is a theoretical point of view that sees "reading comprehension [as beginning] with and . . . controlled by the text, as in letter and text decoding." And third, the "interactive" philosophy (sometimes called "integrated") is a theoretical perspective that sees "reading comprehension [as involving] both the accurate, sequential processing of text and the experiences and expectancies that the reader brings to the text, each acting on and modifying the other."
8. P. David Pearson, "Six Ideas in Search of a Champion: What Policymakers Should Know About the Teaching and Learning of Literacy in Our Schools," Journal of Literacy Research, vol. 28, 1996, pp. 302-9.
9. Jack Cassidy and Judith K. Wenrich, "What's Hot, What's Not for 1997," Reading Today, February/March 1997, p. 34.
10. More details and information on this study and its findings will be available in the forthcoming books, What Do the Experts Say? Contexts and Practices for Classroom Reading (Heinemann) and Reading Researchers in Search of Common Ground (publisher under negotiation).
PDK Home | Site Map
Kappan Professional Journal
Last updated 18 January 1998
URL: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kfli9712.htm
Copyright 1998 Phi
Delta Kappa International