Sidebar: Board of Education Unanimously Adopts Phonics 

Massachusetts News 
By Paul Moreno 

October 1--It’s been a requirement since 1997 that teachers in Massachusetts should use "phonics" to teach children how to read.  

But no one seems to know whether the teachers are doing it or not. The problem arises because the education establishment in the state does not want to teach phonics. They are instructing teachers how to obfuscate the matter. They instruct the teachers that this is a political battle and parents who want their children to learn phonics are members of the "political and religious Far Right." 

The college which graduates the most teachers in Massachusetts, Lesley College, has been singled out as an example of a teachers college which is still teaching its students that the use of phonics is a bad method of teaching. This charge was made by Lynne Cheney, who was Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, under Presidents Reagan and Bush. 

"For example," Cheney said, "since 1997, Massachusetts has had reading standards that call for the formal teaching of letter-sound relationships. Yet at Lesley College, which prepares more teachers than any other institution in the Commonwealth, education students are still learning from [a textbook for teachers] that phonics instruction is useless or even a ‘handicap.’" 

Some experts say this may explain why over half of the new teachers certified by Massachusetts teacher education programs failed the state’s test of reading competency last year. 

"Instead of saying that teachers should provide phonics, it should say that they must do so," Barbara Anderson, co-director of Citizens for Limited Taxation told Massachusetts News. She says she taught phonics to her son back in the 60’s before he went to school and he was reading at the third grade level when he entered first grade. 

A nationally known writer and expert, Stanley L. Blumenfeld, Waltham, says it would be very difficult for a teacher to go against the entrenched teaching practices. He says, "I don’t know of any teachers college that instructs teachers how to teach intensive systematic phonics." 

They advise a parent whose child is not doing well in language to supplement the teaching at home with the use of phonics. 

Similar To Teaching Chinese 

The most clear-cut educational decision that has been made in the last decade is that children need traditional, phonics instruction in order to learn to read. 

But "progressive" educators have long held that children learn to read better by the "whole language" method, sometimes called the "look-say" technique. Whole language instruction has children associate words with pictures, instead of associating letters with sounds. In a sense, it’s like the Chinese method of learning a different "sign" for every word. 

It began in 1898 when John Dewey wrote an essay in which he advocated shifting the emphasis in primary schools away from the development of academic skill, particularly reading, to the development of the social skills. "This was necessary," says Blumenfeld, "if the education system were to be used to bring about a socialist society where collectivist values would be favored over individualistic values." 
 
 

Most parents think that phonics has triumphed. 

However, many educators are saying that the education establishment has circled the wagons to preserve whole-language instruction. They are determined to defy any change because they think that phonics is a right-wing conspiracy. 

Some say that the persistence of whole language shows the power wielded by the combination of teacher unions, professional associations, administrators, and publishers – the "interlocking directorate" of the public education monopoly, as it has been called.  

Massachusetts Mandate Ignored 

In March of 1998 a report by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, attempted to put an end to the debate between phonics and whole language advocates. The Boston Globe said that the report "strongly supports many phonics principles, and – in a rebuff to whole language dogma – says that children should be encouraged to sound out familiar words instead of guessing at them from their context." 

Massachusetts, like many other states, has made phonics instruction part of its public education curriculum. 

The standards imposed under the Education Reform Act say, "To ensure steady progress in reading, all primary grade teachers should provide both explicit, systematic phonics instruction and a variety of high quality reading materials that motivate students to read fluently and with understanding." 

But neither that mandate nor the scientific reports have made much impact on Massachusetts’ education establishment.  

Recently, Secretary Cheney reported that teacher colleges all over America continue to tell prospective teachers that whole language is a better method. 

She cited Lesley College and said it continues to use Regie Routman’s textbook, Invitations: Changing as Teachers and Learners K-12, which tells teachers that "phonics instruction is a useless sore, even a handicap." It advises them on how to continue the use of whole language.  

Paul Karoff, the Vice President for Public Affairs at Lesley College, denies Cheney’s charges. "She mischaracterizes Lesley College’s approach to teacher training in general and phonics in particular," Karoff told Massachusetts News. 

He says that Cheney’s story "seems to be premised on the use of a single text (among many) which appeared on perhaps no more than a single syllabus (among many dozens)." 

But Cheney drew from many textbooks taken from all over the country, to claim that the education establishment is able to defy parents and public authorities with impunity. She believes it wields tremendous power through unions, professional organizations, and publishing companies. 

The Whole-Language Makeover 

Education Week reported in March that: "Despite claims to the contrary, whole language, while maimed, is surviving – even thriving, in some places." Routman told Education Week that she has distanced herself from the label, but not the philosophy, of whole language. 

One easy method of evasion is just to change the terminology of whole language. The Portsmouth, New Hampshire, publisher of Routman’s book, Heinemann, has this year published another defense of whole language, Stephen D. Krash’s Three Arguments Against Whole Language and Why They Are Wrong. It is sponsoring a workshop on "Whole-to-Parts Phonics Instruction," a strategy in which "children form their own phonic geralities [essentially the forming of a new word] so that they can make analogies between print words they have learned to recognize in context to figure out how to pronounce unfamiliar print words." 

Whole language also benefits from institutional power. Teacher training in reading is dominated by the 90,000-member National Council of Teachers of English. Its president-elect, Jerome C. Harse, has had a "whole language" book published by Heinemann. That company also publishes a book by a professor at Western Michigan State University, Constance Weaver (read an excerpt), who says that phonics serves the "political Far Right’s agenda" of "promoting docility and obedience on the part of the lower classes." She also writes: 

"Teaching intensive phonics is also a way of keeping children’s attention on doing what they’re told and keeping them from reading or thinking for themselves." Weaver tells the future teachers that the proponents are motivated by a desire "to promote a religious agenda and/or to maintain the socioeconomic status quo." 

In fact, many believe that poor children are likelier to be kept poor and ignorant by theories like Weaver’s. It has long been the claim of "progressive educators" that teaching the traditional liberal arts by traditional methods perpetuates an aristocracy. But others counter that their "democratic" methods are the greatest threat to democracy imaginable. As Arthur Bestor put it in 1953, "The way to perpetuate an aristocracy is to give sound intellectual training to a minority and offer people generally a cheap and shoddy substitute." 

It may not be, as some believe, that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy that seeks to keep children ignorant so that they will believe left-wing propaganda – such as that more spending on public education will improve our schools. But there is certainly an alliance between poor quality schools and educational power. 

Critics say that groups like the Massachusetts Teacher Association and the National Council of Teachers of English could not survive without the membership of thousands of mediocre teachers who survive by union protection. Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky reported last year that one of the constituent members of the organization that accredits teachers colleges is the National Council of Teachers of English. Massachusetts has sixty-one state-accredited institutions of higher learning of which only eight hold accreditation as a teachers college. All are non-selective institutions. The state’s selective, private schools, such as Harvard, Boston University, Brandeis, Smith, and Mount Holyoke, are not thus accredited. 

The Pattern of Escaping Accountability 

Many educators believe that the evasion of phonics is typical of the way in which the teachers colleges have been able to blunt apparently popular mandates. They believe that the laudable shift to "outcomes" (what students actually learn) rather than "inputs" (the resources spent on schools) as the focus of debate in the 1980s ended up with the education establishment changing the shift to "Outcome-Based Education" which further lowered the level of expectation and achievement among American students. 

Constance Weaver, who now helps pedagogues continue the use of "whole language" despite the clamor for phonics, engaged in the same sort of sabotage against grammar in the 1970s. In 1979, when parents and school boards began to demand a return to the instruction of grammar that progressive educators had abandoned, Weaver wrote, "Teachers are faced with an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, a considerable body of research and the testimony of innumerable students suggest that studying grammar doesn’t help people read or write better. On the other hand, the public in general and many English and language arts teachers in particular seem convinced that studying grammar does help, or at least it should." 

Weaver’s recommendation was predictable. "Students do need to develop a good intuitive sense of grammar, but they can do this best through indirect rather than direct instruction. Instead of formally teaching them grammar, we need to give them plenty of structured and unstructured opportunities to deal with language directly."... Teachers need not teach grammar so much as use their knowledge of grammar in helping students to use language more effectively." The critics say that all of the fingerprints of progressive education are here – indirection, intuition, unstructured activity – in short, teachers not teaching and students not learning. 

Behind the defense of these teaching methods is the belief that there is nothing wrong with the performance of American students. This is the argument of David Berliner’s 1995 book, The Manufactured Crisis. Jeff McQuillan claims in The Literary Crisis, published last year (again by Heinemann and endorsed by Routman), that: 

"Contrary to popular belief, reading achievement has not been declining over the past three decades; US students are not among the worst readers in the world, and holistic, progressive approaches to literacy education [i.e., whole language] have not been a wholesale failure. 

"What’s more, children are reading at the same or a better level than they did a generation ago." The only problem, he argues, is that not enough money is being spent on books. 

Similarly, Kenneth S. Goodman of the University of Arizona, often referred to as the father of whole language, argues in Phonics Phacts (Heinemann): "For many people, phonics is a political buzzword, a cause, making it difficult for the education profession and the public to learn much about real phonics." " He says that "phonics is often used to frighten and politicize rural and working-class parents, as well as bully teachers engaged in whole language teaching." 

In short, the education establishment believes that all is well with public education, that its only problems stem from lack of money, and concerns about educational failures are right-wing scare tactics. 
 

All of this may explain, say some experts, why over half of the new teachers certified by Massachusetts teacher education programs failed the state’s test of reading competency in the last year. 

Despite doubling the state budget under the Education Reform Act, virtually no improvement has been seen in academic achievement.  

Barbara Anderson, co-director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, says that the problem is the Massachusetts law is not stringent enough. 

"It should add that if they don’t teach phonics, they shall be removed from their jobs, tenure or no tenure, and that they shall be liable for civil action from students who have not learned to read while in their classrooms. 

"Those educators who actually believe the politically-correct foolishness will interpret the law as telling them that they should teach phonics – if they feel like it." 

Groups like CLT believe that the defiance of the educational establishment shows that reform is not possible in the face of the monopoly power wielded by the teacher unions. Like many states, Massachusetts has permitted a small number of "charter schools," which are "independent" public schools that are free of teacher union contracts. The state constitution currently forbids the use of "vouchers" for private religious schools, though a petition drive is under way to amend that provision.