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It's always worse than you think.

Check out the political agenda of the whole language founders and promoters as outlined in The Whole Language Catalog and the Reading and Writing Quarterly.

An analysis of this agenda is in the Comment section here: http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/revised-whole-language-golf.html

Now I understand, among other things, why educationists oppose tests and basal readers, for example.

Excerpt from Patrick Groff's analysis:

The third prominent argument for employing WL teaching to convey political-economic ideology centers on an attack on standardized reading tests.12 That assault on those tests is not surprising since they measure how well students comprehend precisely the meanings authors planned to convey and not how well they are “socialized into particular social practices” of a left-wing origin.

The Quarterly writers voice vigorous grievances against the tests: they are “scientific,” statistically sophisticated, and based on “meritocratic principles,” that is, “glorify” competitiveness. Proof that these tests “corrupt the concept of fairness” is that students who score low on them typically are from politically oppressed low-income minority families. These students do not possess “the knowledge required” to score high on the tests and do not have “knowledge of test-taking skills.” Therefore, testing these students signifies a “systematic bias” against them of a “racist” nature. Since it is held that the tests pander to students who are “white, male, middleclass, and American ” scores on them thus “may be more findings of cultural difference [among students] than anything else.”13

From the advent of the WL movement in the 1970s, its members have charged that standardized reading tests deliberately project socio-economically disadvantaged students onto “a trajectory of school-based failure.” The Quarterly writers repeated the common WL outcry that such testing must be abandoned and replaced with “individualized assessment” by bona fide WL teachers. This changeover, if activated, doubtless would work to the advantage of WLs reputation. So far, all the published accounts of WL instruction involving teacher assessment of students’ reading conclude that it is superior to DISEC teaching. On the other hand, an overwhelming preponderance of relevant experimental research findings conclude the opposite.

The writers’ fourth main argument for the necessity of WL teaching that politically indoctrinates students is that DISEC instruction is expressly designed to “protect the privilege of the upper and upper-middle classes by encoding their values and intentions into school reading practices.” This encoding is said to take place through schools’ adoption of traditional reading instruction textbook series, called basal readers. These series of books are castigated as a dastardly “remote control” device operated by “the upper-middle and upper classes” to “neutralize other peoples’ [the downtrodden masses’] literacies in their efforts to control their lives.”14 Lower-class and minority students, the writers claim, cannot satisfy the rigorous requirements imposed by the readers, for example, “completing daily assignments and periodical tests, ” because they do not reflect these students’ peculiar cultural “intentions and values” and “ways of making sense of [written] text.” 15

According to the writers, the economic upper-classes induce frustration among students by “design.” Through the imposed adoption of basal readers, the socioeconomic despots engage in “manufacturing reading failures among their [lower-class] children and hindering their prospects for the future” for jobs with decent wages. As a result, under-class students “doubt the value of who they are and what they do and could know.”16

-- CharlesH - 06 Feb 2006

When you read Sandra Stotsky's entire article http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2005/10/willful-indifference.html and Patrick Groff, it becomes clear how reading instruction was politicized.

I remember that you commented on this issue in connection with a WSJ commentary. People like Ken Goodman, the WL founder, explicitly linked systematic reading instruction to the "right-wing".

Also see a study that refutes a basic tenet of WL, the psychotic guessing game (miscue analysis) here: http://instructivist.blogspot.com/2005/07/maze-craze.html

-- CharlesH - 06 Feb 2006

Thanks, Charles - haven't read it yet, but I will.

I'm getting the feeling that these folks have 'played out their hand.'

How much patience does the public have left for this stuff?

I'd say none.

Of course, constructivists have institutional power that doesn't dissolve because 'the public' is out of patience.

-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Feb 2006

Stotsky on how reading instruction was politicized:

In her last book, Chall frankly noted that the problem today is the identification of each theory and the pedagogy that best implements it with a political preference. She is right, but she did not explain how this alignment took place in reading. Phonics instruction was not aligned with any political party or label until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Advocates of a subject-centered education like Richard Hofstadter, Albert Shanker, and E.D. Hirsch were political liberals, not conservatives. Phonics instruction was one of the first areas of pedagogy to be politicized, and by the author of Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game -Kenneth Goodman, with the help of his educator wife, Yetta Goodman. They were the founders of the whole language movement. In an attempt to ascribe the low reading achievement of low-income children to language differences, not language deficits, Goodman claimed that phonics instruction imposed standard forms of speech on dialect-speaking children through the teaching of conventional sound-letter correspondences, leading to a lack of motivation to learn to read and to these children's failure to connect what they decoded with their native language. Because they could not associate the words they identified with the language they spoke, he argued, they could not read with meaning. Phonics instruction, he also implied, was the preferred strategy of Christian fundamentalists, darkly hinting that it was favored by conservative parents because it fit in with attempts at controlled literal understandings of a text. In effect, Goodman made phonics instruction a civil rights issue and smeared it as a tool of both white middle class oppressors and white fanatics.

Goodman's colleagues in education schools across the country took up this argument with eagerness and further support from Paulo Freire's influential Pedagogy for the Oppressed , first published in 1970 and now available in a 30 th anniversary edition. A Brazilian educator and a Marxist, Freire, too, ridiculed phonics instruction as an oppressive strategy for teaching illiterate Brazilian fishermen and farmers how to read, advocating instead a whole language approach. To a large extent, his teaching materials consisted of party slogans and Marxist propaganda, so far as I can determine. Although Freire has been judged one of the most influential educators of the 20 th century, I have been unable to locate independent evaluations of his work in Brazil or elsewhere.

-- CharlesH - 06 Feb 2006

Another point of interest.

The National Council of Teachers of English (considered the premier "professional" organization of teachers of English), runs something called the Whole Language Umbrella. http://www.ncte.org/groups/wlu/leadership/107155.htm That doctrine is an integral part of that organization.

NCTE also runs a network called Teachers Applying Whole Language that holds constant conferences. I read some of the transcripts and something curious caught my eye. The argument was made at one of the conferences that teachers should not teach spelling because they can't spell themselves. They should not expect more from their students than they are able to do. This is fascinating. Teacher ignorance as an argument for student ignorance. The right thing to do, IMHO, would be to encourage teachers to become more knowledgeable.

I also found it curious that one of the Teachers Applying Whole Language groups has a political awareness committee. http://tawl.missouri.org/

Why don't these clowns concentrate on phonemic awareness?

-- CharlesH - 06 Feb 2006

The indispensable Fordham Institute had a big report on why the big Follow-Through study was ignored.

Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine)

by Douglas Carnine

http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=46

-- CharlesH - 06 Feb 2006

This tendency of bureaucracies to ignore and try to bury systematic evaluations is much wider than the educational bureaucracy.

For example, the history of the development of a method for measuring longitudede shows similar behaviour. Or the behaviour of British generals during WWI.

This makes me think that just blaming the people involved and calling them evil does not do much good.

Somehow we need to change institutions so that people have to pay attention to results. Market structures tend to do this (if you continually ignore feedback, eventually a competitor who doesn't tends to come along and steal your customers), but I'm not sure how you add them into education or other bureaucracies, or what subsitute could be devised.

-- TracyW - 06 Feb 2006

Tracy - you do public policy, right??

(Or did?)

You've gotta write some stuff for us — !

-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Feb 2006

Tracy

This makes me think that just blaming the people involved and calling them evil does not do much good

Absolutely.

I don't know when I finally figured this out, but it's absolutely true.

I haven't posted about this, because I can't yet (relates to a book project), but one thing I learned from Temple is:

"The same people who perform badly inside a bad system can turn around and perform well inside a good system."

Temple's work with McDonald^?'s is revolutionary.

Her animal welfare audit basically reformed an entire industry in 18 months' time.

And here's the cool thing: the same people who were doing such a bad job before the audit turned around and did great jobs after.

This wasn't always the case. Temple has figures on how many employees at each plant needed to be removed.

But for the vast majority of plant employees, it was true.

Temple says there were plenty of cases where the plant 'troublemaker' became a 'star employee' after the audit was imposed.

-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Feb 2006

I assume you're talking about monitoring 'outputs,' not 'inputs' (correct me if I'm wrong).

That's my mantra: OUTPUTS.

I support NCLB for this reason. It's an outputs approach to the schools. (It does need some modifications; as things stand it appears to reward states for lowering standards & then meeting them.)

You're absolutely right about bureaucracies. Ed was saying, a couple of days ago, that bureaucracies are designed to diffuse responsibility.

Of course, this means that not only can you not blame anyone, but an employee who wants to take personal responsibility for a project or an outcome is going to have a hard time doing it.

-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Feb 2006

Write what about what?

I'm rather limited in what I can write anyway that's directly about my work, since much of what I did is covered by confidentiality issues and it would be unethical to talk about it.

Anyway, I have my doubts about how effective focussing on monitoring outputs rather than inputs will be. Bureaucracies have strong incentives to lobby for evaluation levels to be reduced or made meaningless, e.g. the lobbying currently going on over the NCLB.

And wars tend to have pretty clear results, yet one sees military commanders failing to learn all the time there too.

And failing businesses have been known to lobby the government to try to avoid going bust. Sometimes they've succeeded too.

-- TracyW - 06 Feb 2006

Now I've stopped feeling quite so depressed, there are some upsides.

Democracy seems to help in keeping governments somewhat responsive to criticism. If nothing else, the head-in-the-sands get unelected (e.g. Robert Muldoon).

Also a lack of natural resources. One of the puzzles in development economics for a long time was "why are so many countries poor, despite having rich natural resources?" A rather convincing argument is that they're poor because the government can make money from the natural resources rather than having to create incentives to create wealth and pander to the taxpayers. The cry should be "No representation without taxation" - with apologies to the American revolutionaries. Of course, this raises the question: "Why is Australia so rich, despite having rich natural resources?"

-- TracyW - 06 Feb 2006

Anyway, I have my doubts about how effective focussing on monitoring outputs rather than inputs will be. Bureaucracies have strong incentives to lobby for evaluation levels to be reduced or made meaningless, e.g. the lobbying currently going on over the NCLB.

So you would say monitoring outputs works better in industry?

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Feb 2006

I'll have to post some of ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION.

Temple's audit is brilliant.

It works.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Feb 2006

Any general thoughts you have on policy are interesting to me - I wasn't thinking of anything more specific.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Feb 2006