THE LINGUISTICS, NEUROLOGY, AND POLITICS OF PHONICS - PART 1 docx

Nonetheless, we both agree that the legislation and mandates en­dorsed by entrepreneurial neophonics advocates reflect little of the sub­stantial empirical evidence concerning effective

THE LINGUISTICS, NEUROLOGY, AND POLITICS OF PHONICS Silent "E" Speaks Out

Silent "E" Speaks Out

Steven L Strauss

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

2005 Mahwah, New Jersey London

Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other

means, without the prior written permission of the publisher

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue

Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

The quoted material at the beginning of each part of the book is taken from the following sources:

Part I: Dickens, C (1961). Hard times New York: New American Library

Part II: Einstein, A (1954). Ideas and opinions New York: Wings Books (Reprinted from The New York Times, p 37, 1952, October 5)

Part III: Dante, A (1949). The divine comedy 1: Hell (D L Sayers, Trans.) London: Penguin

Books (Original work published 1314)

Part IV: Sheehan, H (1993). Marxism and thephilosophy of science: A critical history Atlantic High­

lands, NJ: Humanities Press International (Original work published 1985)

Some of the material in the book was reworked from the following sources and appears with permission of the publishers:

Strauss, S L (2003, February) Challenging the NICHD reading research agenda. Phi Delta Kappan, 438-442

Strauss, S L (2000, November) The politics of reading and dyslexia. Z Magazine, pp 48—53

Strauss, S L (1999, January) Phonics, whole language, and H.R 2614.Z Magazine, pp 46-50

Altwerger, B., & Strauss, S L (2002) The business behind testing. Language Arts, 256-262

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Linguistics, Neurology, and Politics of Phonics: Silent "E" Speaks Out, by Steven L Strauss ISBN 0-8058-4743-X (cloth : alk paper) — ISBN 0-8058-5244-1 (pbk : alk paper) Includes bibliographical references and index

Copyright information for this volume can be obtained by contacting the Library of Congress Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,

and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability

Printed in the United States of America

1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my mother Selma Strauss, and to the loving memory

of my father Seymour Strauss

II: THE NEOPHONICS SOLUTION:

Vlll CONTENTS

11 The Phonics of Silent

IV: DEFENDING SCIENCE AND DEMOCRACY

Foreword

Richard L Allington

University of Florida

I'll bet Steve Strauss and I wouldn't wholly agree on just what constitutes an

"ideal" instructional plan for developing children's reading proficiencies I'll bet our plans would diverge in the area of children's decoding develop­ment Nonetheless, we both agree that the legislation and mandates en­dorsed by entrepreneurial neophonics advocates reflect little of the sub­stantial empirical evidence concerning effective literacy instruction and even less of what scientific research has documented about how best to teach children to read proficiently Their recommendations for developing children's decoding proficiencies fail not just to reflect the broad scientific evidence but also to reliably represent the even epistemologically and methodologically narrow findings of the National Reading Panel (Alling­ton, 2002; Garan, 2002; Foorman & Fletcher, 2003; Shanahan, 2001, 2002, 2003; Yatvin, 2003)

Although most teachers (and probably most school administrators, teacher educators, and researchers) have not read the full NRP report, and

so generally fail to recognize the systematic misrepresentations of the find­ings of that flawed report (Camilli, Vargas, & Yurecko, 2003; Coles, 2003; Cunningham, 2001), they do recognize that much of the current advice of­fered by the entrepreneurial neophonics advocates contradicts the profes­sional wisdom that accumulates as a result of instructional experience They recognize that, when the federal government distributes a document suggesting that independent reading at school is not supported by science but that independent reading at home is (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001), something is awry When this same document offers criteria for "sci­entific" reading programs, criteria based more in ideology than in evidence

ix

X FOREWORD

(Allington, 2002), teachers may wonder just what sort of science could in­

vent such criteria

Likewise, when policy mandates the use of a scripted one-size-fits-all read­

ing program, teachers wonder how anyone who raised even a single child

could imagine that children do not differ in their development and their in­

structional needs These teachers may not be familiar with a century of re­

search showing that "proven" programs are among the most antiscientific

ideas ever promoted, but they do know that children differ and so too must

the literacy instruction they receive Some kids come to literacy with relatively

little effort or anxiety, whereas others struggle Some kids need less instruc­

tional attention, others need more, and some need much, much more This

should be considered the normal state of affairs In every human proficiency,

deviation from "normal" development is expected Whether we look at ice

skating, cello playing, video gaming, written composition, figure drawing,

mathematical computation, spelling, pseudoword-decoding speed, or rapid

automized naming of random objects, children differ Even given the same

quantity and quality of instruction on any of these tasks, children still differ

in how easily or quickly they develop proficiency

I worry about the current emphasis on stigmatization of children who

find learning to be literate more difficult How else is a struggling child to

feel when left behind in third grade because his performances failed to

meet an arbitrary institutional standard, when he fails day after day in that

mandated one-size-fits-all reading program?

Every parent (and teacher) knows how important motivation is to ac­

complished performances And they know how important success is to mo­

tivation (Pressley et al., 2003) Being dubbed a reading failure daily works

against ever marshalling the effort needed to become accomplished at liter­

acy But dubbing children (and their teachers) failures seems the current

policy theme

So what is a teacher (or principal, teacher educator, researcher, or par­

ent) to do? Jules Henry (cited in Kohl, 2003) argued for three forms of

sanity

In the first form, one believes the sham is the truth Perhaps out of igno­

rance or naivete or ideological bias, a sham simply isn't recognized as a sham

In the second form, we see through the sham but decide to let it ride and

go along with it, all the while recognizing the sham for what it is In this case

we go along with the sham when airport security demands a young mother

drink from the baby's bottle of milk before being allowed to pass into the

boarding area (you never know what the white milky stuff might really be!),

or when grandma is allowed to bring her plastic knitting needles on board

but not her aluminum ones

In the final form, we see through the sham and fight against it as best we

can For teachers this might include ignoring mandates For school admin­

istrators this might result in rejecting state or federal monies with too many

XI FOREWORD

strings attached (as a number of schools across the country have done in re­

jecting available Reading First funding) For teacher educators it might be

documenting for education students the breadth of the fraud being perpet­

uated as scientifically based reading Researchers, however, write books and

articles about the fraud, which brings us to this eloquent and important

book written by neurologist Steven Strauss

Given the complexity of the topics Strauss writes about (democracy, eco

nomics, geneticism, neurology, linguistics, aphasia), I was surprised that I

understood most of it and enjoyed reading all of it My students understood

and enjoyed the chapters I distributed to them for course readings The

breadth of this book is its single most striking feature With discussions of

academic imperialism, high-stakes testing, federalized education mandates,

media complicity, Lysenkoism, MRI imaging, the antiscientific neophonics

movement with its entrepreneurial promotion of mind-numbing skill and

drill commercial kits and packages, this book cuts a broad swath through

current educational fads and the pseudosciences and political and eco­

nomic forces that sustain the fads

The clear, concise, and powerful chapters on the pseudoscience that un­

derlies the recent instructional mandates represent a major contribution to

the education profession Here Strauss illustrates just how uninformed

many researchers are about the relational and marking rules of the English

alphabetic system, so uninformed that they are unable to construct a reli­

able set of words to test their theories about decoding acquisition They are

so narrow in their training and worldview that they seem wholly unaware of

the limited and parochial nature of their views of science generally, and the

science of literacy acquisition specifically

To paraphrase Harvard scholar Richard Elmore (2002), the current fed­

eral reading policy (I say "reading policy" because writing, thinking, speak­

ing, and listening have all been somehow left behind) is based on little

more than ideological gossip among people who know hardly anything

about the institutional realities of classrooms and even less about the prob­

lems of improving instruction in schools Strauss reminds us that we know

better (or should) and he has elected the third form of sanity, resistance

I hope this book finds the wide audience it deserves I hope it moves

more folks to elect that third form of sanity and begin to use both science

and the professional wisdom to work to bring America's children truly

evi-dence-based literacy instruction

REFERENCES

Allington, R L (2002). Big brother and the national reading curriculum: How ideology trumped evi­

dence Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann

xii FOREWORD Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn,J (2001). Put readingfirst Washington, DC: National Insti­

tute for Literacy

Camilli, G., Vargas, S., & Yurecko, M (2003) Teaching children to read: The fragile link be­

tween science and federal education policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, ll(15) [On­

line] Available: http://epaa.asu.edu.epaa/vllnl5/

Coles, G (2003). Reading the naked truth: Literacy, legislation, and lies Portsmouth, NH:

Foorman, B., & Fletcher, J (2003) Correcting errors. Phi Delta Kappan, 84, 719

Garan, E (2002). Resisting reading mandates: How to triumph with the truth Portsmouth, NH:

Heinemann

Kohl, H R (2004). Stupidity and tears New York: New Press

Pressley, M., Dolezal, S E., Raphael, L M., Mohan, L., Roehrig, A D., & Bogner, K (2003)

Motivating primary grade students New York: Guilford Press

Shanahan, T (2001) Response to Elaine Garan. Language Arts, 79, 70-71

In this book I explore the driving forces behind the current sponsored resurrection of phonics, and the arguments used to justify its le­gal sanctification I show that one thing is absolutely clear: Politics has taken precedence over science, and over common sense as well

government-Teachers and students today are under immense pressure, with ord­nance falling from the very highest levels of government As Washington pushes to consolidate its control over classroom curriculum, especially in the area of reading instruction, teachers and students are feeling the con­straints tighten around their own independent thinking, creativity, and self-expression The mutually invigorating joys of teaching and learning are suf­focating from the smoke of burned-out teachers and learners

To advance its agenda for reading and reading instruction, Washington has legislated a self-serving definition of science It would appear that this

definition has guided phonics into center stage in elementary school class­rooms, and kicked meaning-centered approaches to reading off stage In truth, though, as shown in this book, the government's distorted view of sci­ence was carefully concocted in order to justify an already-made commit­ment to the resurrection of phonics, even after decades of meaning-cen-tered research had demonstrated its profound limitations

The new phonics, or what I prefer to call neophonics, is a central compo­

nent of the government's new curriculum However, it did not arise in a vacuum, and would wither away overnight without the dual escorts of law and coercion, popularly referred to as high-stakes testing and accountability

Might makes right in the field of science, and it is the political right that fashions the might

XIV PREFACE Under various undemocratically imposed accountability maneuvers,

teachers are now pressured into using state-approved, commercial phonics

materials, whether they agree with them or not At the same time, they are

being intimidated against using more authentic, meaning-centered materi­

als, even when their professional judgments are on the side of real litera­

ture, written language as communication, and the cultivation of critical

thinking in their students

Students are being tested at younger and younger ages, as precious class

time that should be used for meaningful curriculum gives way to test prepa­

ration Parents are caught between the promise of a rosy economic future

for a child who scores high in the new curriculum, and the reality of height­

ened anxiety, competitiveness, jealousy, and suspicion The reality has not

yet hit home that, given the same economic system, the future will be no

less insecure than it already is, no matter how well children master phonics

In this book I show how phonics is one element of a larger political pro­

gram to remake the U.S labor force, to equip the next generation of work­

ers with those "21st-century literacy skills" that corporate America sees as vi­

tal to its own survival This is corporate America's own "literacy crisis,"

which, true to historical form, it is trying to hand off to working people as

their crisis This crisis, we are told, is not corporate America's own insecurity

about maintaining short- and long-term profit-making capabilities, but

rather, the next generation of workers' potential inability to find decent

jobs if they do not become better readers "Raising academic standards will

help your child succeed in today's increasingly competitive world," chimes

the CEOs of the nation's largest corporations (Business Roundtable, 1998a,

par 2) Corporate America claims it is doing working America a favor,

whipping students into line for their own good

But phonics itself is not the brainchild of corporate America It is the so­

lution to corporate America's own literacy crisis that has been offered to it

by certain politically well-positioned reading personalities and scientists

Still, only corporate America's extreme sense of urgency regarding its bat­

tle with overseas competitors, and its perception that winning this battle re­

quires a new type of labor force, can explain the aggressiveness with which

phonics has been dumped onto the laps of teachers and students

Important critiques of the government's politicized phonics agenda

have been on bookshelves for several years Among these are Richard L

Arlington's Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum: How Ideology

Trumped Evidence (2002); Gerald Coles' Misreading Reading: The Bad Science

that Hurts Children (2002) and Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation,

and Lies (2003); Elaine Garan's Resisting Reading Mandates: How to Triumph

With the Truth (2002); Richard J Meyer's Phonics Exposed: Understanding

and Resisting Systematic Direct Intense Phonics Instruction (2001); and Denny