by Once a decade or so, the New York Times publishes a hysterical article about “the reading wars,” in which the argument for systematic phonics instruction is advanced. They just did it again in An Old and Contested Solution to Boost Reading Scores: Phonics. The article is a predictable mess.
The phonics phanatics are hard-core. One academic used to contact my former university and demand that I be terminated whenever I questioned the phonics gospel in my magazine column. That was in addition to sending scalding letters-to-the-editor.
In 2004, the entire editorial staff of the magazine I worked for was threatened with termination for questioning Reading First. Here’s another one I wrote in 2006.
To “commemorate” the latest discovery of the “reading wars”, I humbly suggest that journalists tackle the following questions.
Q1: Anyone remember when “whole language” was banned in California? Any journalist wish to follow-up on that legacy?
Q2: Why is “balance” virtuous? Can’t it be dangerous or wrong? In my experience, educational quests for balance result in the weeds killing the flowers. In education, “balance” can be not only simplistic, but cowardly and wrong. When schools seek “balance,” the weeds always kill the flowers.
Q3: Why does the defense of systematic phonics instruction remain a top priority of the religious right?
Q4: Why are the same people so often anti-science when it comes to issues like climate change or sexual orientation and yet cling to phonics instruction as scientifically proven?
Q5: Has there been any research or journalistic investigation (or even interview) about the evolution of Lucy Calkins’ work over time? I acknowledge her contributions, but have simple profound ideas become massive curriculum products? If so, what has been lost/gained?
Q6: Where is all of this “unbalanced” whole language influence emanating from? Please name the texts or teacher preparatory programs that have gone hog wild on non-phonics-based instruction. (Not excusing the batshit crazy, sloppy, silly, reading myths SOME teachers subscribe to.)
Q7: NAME A TIME OR PLACE IN THE POST-WAR (WW II) ERA WHERE PHONICS HAS NOT COMPLETELY DOMINATED READING INSTRUCTION. Doesn’t a “reading war” require actual combatants? One side has nuclear weapons and every White House, the other has Shel Siverstein.
Q8: How can you publish an article about the reading wars without any input from the seminal experts on the losing side? Where is the expertise of scholars such as, Frank Smith, Ken Goodman, Richard Allington, Herbert Kohl? I know you now how to reach Stephen Krashen. He writes letters-to-the-editor of the New York Times regularly.
Q9: How about writing an article in which lots and lots of experts do nothing but define “phonics,” “whole language,” “literacy,” “balanced literacy,” “reading,” and “instruction?”
Q10: If everyone learns to read by being taught a sequence of 43 phonemic sounds, how do you explain children reading in Israel, China, Japan, or other countries with non-phonemic languages. How can deaf people possibly learn to read without phonics>
I respectfully implore you to investigate the effects of an unconscionable lack of access to high-interest reading material in classrooms and school libraries in places like Los Angeles and Oakland. https://www.accessbooks.net/school-library-crisis.html
Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.