Educational journalist Emily Hanford is back with a second season of her terror inducing podcast, Sold a Story. After blaming teachers for not being sufficiently phanatical about phonics instruction, a pedagogical fetish that has dominated American education for at least two decades, Hanford has embraced Direct Instruction, a practice as delusional as it is cruel.
To share Hanford’s affection for Direct Instruction, one needs a depraved notion of childhood that views the existence of childhood as little creatures put on earth to bark “facts” in unison and take tests to determine the efficacy of their captors.
When I saw the following trailer for the podcast season, I was overcome by an uneasy feeling of déjà vu. That feeling of dread was triggered by this accompanying text:
“Direct Instruction is a highly structured curriculum developed in the 1960s by Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann. Numerous studies show the program is extremely effective, but fewer than 200 schools in the U.S. use it with all their students.”
Remember that name, Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann.
Throughout the publicity for the podcast, and likely in the show itself (life is too short and my blood pressure is too high to listen), Hanford accuses educators of willful ignorance or wholesale refusal to perform her preferred pedagogical magic trick. There is more than a whiff of QAnon or Pizzagate-like conspiracy to her condemnation of teachers. The notion that there is a conspiratorial cabal – a teacher’s room deep state – that has actively plotted to teach ineffectively is as preposterous as it is insulting.
I’m a Bad Boy
In 2004, I was a Senior Editor at District Administration Magazine. I authored a monthly opinion column in addition to writing the sort of feature pieces that can no longer find an editorial home. During the lead up to the 2004 Presidential election, I wrote two columns highly critical of the education policies advocated by Democratic nominee John Kerrey and the incumbent Republican President George W. Bush. Both columns were heavily fact-checked and the Kerrey piece was published without controversy.
When the magazine ran my George W. Bush critique, it ran afoul of the magazine’s owner who was incensed by a column that was orthogonal to his political views. My job and that of magazine’s editor were in serious jeopardy. The owner was so upset by my column that he published an apology letter to readers in the very next issue. There was no need to apologize. No readers complained and the publication timeline required him to write the mea culpa far in advance of print publication. In other words, he responded to complaints before readers had a chance to read the article and complain.
Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann was a character in that scandalous 2004 column! (reprinted below) Ms. Hanford seems unwilling to consider that teachers did not ignore Direct Instruction because some claim it to be effective. They reject it because it is tedious, cruel, and inhumane.
It should be noted that Engelmann refers to those who reject Direct Instruction as the traditionalists. Oh, the irony!
Let’s Take a Trip in the Wayback Machine!
The following opinion column from the October 2004 issue of District Administration Magazine caused the owner (and Editor-in-Chief) of the magazine to publish an apology in the very next issue. The mea culpa was published before any reader or advertiser complained. None did. This column never appeared on the magazine’s web site, so it is published here. ㅤ
In August 2004, District Administration Magazine published my harsh critique of Senator John Kerry’s education plan. It may be read here. ㅤ
In other words, the following fact-checked article was deemed unfair when an article critical of the political opponent two months earlier was fair game. ㅤ
I remain incredibly proud of this article because it was timely, witty, and predicted the ultimate disaster caused by the policies I criticized.
Gary Stager on Direct Instruction
Perhaps it’s time to end political social promotion
In his film, Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore shows President Bush in a Florida classroom on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The film’s narration said that while America was being attacked, the president read the book, My Pet Goat, to a room full of young children. This is factually inaccurate in three important ways.
The story is actually titled, The Pet Goat.
It is not a book, but an exercise in a heavily scripted basal.
The president did not read the story to the children.
Any perceptive educator watching this would quickly realize what was going on. The president was not in that classroom to demonstrate his love of reading. Being read to is a powerful literacy experience. Having a wonderful story read to you by the president of the United States could create a memory to last a lifetime.
Unlike his wife, mother and Oval Office predecessors, this president had a more important agenda than demonstrating affection for children or for reading. The trip was part of a calculated campaign to sell No Child Left Behind. In what Michael Moore rightly observed as a photo opportunity, young children were used as props to advance the administration’s radical attack on public education.
The Pet Goat is an exercise from a literary classic called, Reading Mastery 2, by the father of Direct Instruction, Siegfried (Zig) Engelmann. In the 1960s, Engelmann invented a controversial pedagogical approach that reduces knowledge to bite-sized chunks presented in a prescribed sequence enforced by a scripted lesson the teacher is to recite to a classroom of pupils chanting predetermined responses. Every single word the teacher is to utter, including permissible and prohibited words of encouragement, are provided. There is no room for individuality. The Direct Instruction Web site states, “The popular valuing of teacher creativity and autonomy as high priorities must give way to a willingness to follow certain carefully prescribed instructional practices.”
Engelmann told The New Yorker in its July 26, 2004 issue, “We don’t give a damn what the teacher thinks, what the teacher feels. On the teachers’ own time they can hate it. We don’t care, as long as they do it. Traditionalists die over this, but in terms of data we whump the daylights out of them.” It is easy to see how a man of such sensitive temperament could author more than 1,000 literary masterpieces such as The Pet Goat.
While I am sure the Florida school visited is a fine one and the classroom teacher loves children, educational excellence was not being celebrated. This was a party on behalf of Direct Instruction. While Moore made a documentary [some suggest artful propaganda] about the Iraq war, he could have made a movie about the United States government’s ideological attack on the public schools.
The War on Public Education Engelmann’s publisher is a textbook giant with ties to the Bush family dating back to the 1930s. Company namesakes served on George W. Bush’s transition team and the board of his mother’s literacy foundation. The publishers have received honors from two Bush administrations and they in turn have bestowed awards on Secretary Rod Paige, who then keynoted their business conference. The same company’s former executive vice president is the new U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. Direct instruction has become synonymous with the “scientifically based methods” required by No Child Left Behind.
The War on Public Education has ratcheted up parental fear with cleverly designed rhetoric of failing schools, data disaggregation, underperforming students, unqualified teachers and clever slogans like, “no excuses.” If you turn public schools, even the best ones, into single-]minded test-]prep factories where teachers drone on from scripted lessons then more people will want that magical voucher. Repeatedly demonize teachers arid the public will lose confidence regardless of their personal experiences with their local school.
So, how are you doing? Is your job now more about compliance than kids? Are sound educational experiences being sacrificed for test preparation? Has fear replaced joy in your classrooms? President Reagan might suggest we ask ourselves, “Is your school better off than it was four years ago?”
by 
