...they
fear that a clear naming of what they do
will reveal how little it needs doing, and they will
find themselves on the streets selling wind-up
toys. [Richard Mitchell. The underground grammarian, 1,
January, 1977.]
Most
pedagogues...are simply dull persons who have found it easy to get along by
dancing to whatever tune happens to be lined out. At this dancing they
have trained themselves to swallow any imaginable fad or folly, and always with
enthusiasm...Their programs of study sound like
the fantastic inventions of comedians gone insane. The teaching of the elements
is abandoned for a dreadful mass of useless fol-de-rols...
(H. L. Mencken. From "The war on intelligence,"
Unsurpassed
in the murkiness of their brains, incomparable in the stupidity of their
natures, the thorniness of their doctrine, and the blackness of their hearts...
They will explain the precise nature of...a thousand other more sublimated and
refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddities, haeccites and such
like abstrusitiesas one would think no one could pry
into, except he had such cat's eyes as to see best in the dark. [Ersamus. Praise of folly]
Riding
cultural currents of egoism, sappy new age writing, and anti-reason;
relentlessly disseminating nutty "theories" of reading and shamefully
inane critiques of Western society; and appointing themselves stewards of
America's children and champions of social justice--a group of education
professors conceived a way to transform reading instruction (which had been
straightforward) into a body of esoteric beliefs and practices of which they
would be self-anointed priests. They called it "whole
language"--apparently believing that if they called it "baloney"
(truth in advertising) they wouldn't get customers.
Fortunately
for them, ed schools typically turn well-meaning new
students into graduates with little knowledge of instructional design and less
knowledge of "research" on the self-serving and rarely effective
"innovations" served up by the desperate-for-legitimacy-and-tenure
education professoriat--and who, therefore, rely on
doctrinaire ed professors for "the truth."
The
whole language wave swept the land--leaving in its wake illiterate, disengaged
students and burned out teachers. [The only teachers NOT upset by their
students' illiteracy were teachers who didn't KNOW their students couldn't read
because whole language professors convinced them you shouldn't use
"objective" measures to assess achievement.]
Naturally,
parents knew their children couldn't read. So did many veteran teachers
who had been forced to stop teaching in a systematic, direct fashion by school
administrators and district "literacy coordinators" bedazzled by the
whole language cult frenzy.
Eventually,
state and national tests confirmed what parents and many teachers knew for
years--namely, that feel-good, teacher-as-facilitator, nothing-taught-directly
whole language helped make one or two generations of students illiterate and/or
learning disabled. These official revelations were followed by
large scale studies and massive literature
reviews on the most reliably effective features of successful reading
instruction. This research showed that most students learn to read when
phonemic awareness, sound/symbol relationships ("phonics"),
comprehension, and spelling are taught in a carefully arranged logical
progression of tasks by a teacher who knows exactly what she is trying to
teach; who provides clear directions, models, feedback, and error correction
(i.e., teaches systematically and explicitly); and ensures that all students
master every task before going on. In other words, the principles of effective
instruction are the opposite of what is preached with deluded confidence and
unashamed arrogance by whole language gurus and ed
school disciples.
Whole
language cult diehards neither examine what they are doing nor admit they might
be wrong--despite their endless pseudo-scholarly prattle about
"reflection" and "higher-order thinking." [But one oughtn't expect mere data to remedy intellectual dishonesty
and curricular irresponsibility.] Instead, they employ the old
tricks of
(1)
trying to taint the motives of their critics and
discredit the evidence against them; and
(2)
renaming what they do. "Whole
language" suddenly became "balanced literacy." [Same bunk
in a different package.]
And
socially disadvantaged first and second graders--already at least two years
behind advantaged peers--became "emergent readers." [As if they
had all the time in the world to learn at a "developmentally
appropriate" pace. THIS is how social inequality is
reproduced.] However, the word play shows that whole language
diehards are at least consistently immoral.