TLC "Citizen Advocates for Quality Education" The LITERACY COUNCIL
P. O. Box 2845, Huntington Station, NY 11746; Tel/FAX 516-424-1039
Charles M. Richardson, Founder/Chairman cmr1234@aol.com February 6, 1997 76WLCoEx.05

WHOLE-LANGUAGE vs PHONICS EXPLAINED

OUTRIGHT LIES

Then there are the outright lies, like the claim that New Zealand is the most literate country due to WL. New Zealand HAD a high literacy rate 30 years ago -- BEFORE WL! Today their newspapers and magazines are as full as ours of complaints that children cannot read and spell. The June '93 issue of a prominent New Zealand magazine, NORTHAND SOUTH, carried a long and detailed article entitled "Our Illiteracy," by Jenny Chamberlain, who characterizes their linguistic plight as "a ball and chain dragging down the performance of a nation."

PHONICS AND COMPREHENSION The claims that phonics degradescomprehension have been shown to be falseby Dr. Jeanne Chall (1967, 1983) and others. The "establishment" muddied the water still more during the '70's with research on comprehension that failed to show decoding as a factor in comprehension. Chall (1992) took the establishment to task for the way the research subjects we reselected: they were all good decoders! The establishment "cooked the books" to prevent the need for better decoding (phonics) to show in the test data! She also points out that WL's "good literature based" claim is deceptive because phonics programs generally have a greater depth of literature -- AND THE CHILDREN CAN READ IT!(For good literature, take a look at the Spalding reading list.)

Closer to home, Suffolk County's ASTOR literacy program for youth on probation teaches only phonics -- but measures comprehension as a yardstick of progress. And the clients are gaining.

If whole language is all that great, why do its advocates find it expedient to lie?

"NO ONE BEST WAY"

To cover for their shortfall in real insight and scientific integrity, WL gurus have a favorite cliche: "There's no ONE best way to teach reading!" That sounds so erudite, with its snobbish implication that the process is so involved that none but professionals can possibly grasp its alleged complexities. But when you look back at how they have re-defined reading --being anti-phonics -- you can see the way WL people use the cliche muddies the water of discussion to the point of being outright deceptive.

To the typical parent, "READING" EQUALS PHONICS -- the recovery of SOUND from print-- practiced to automaticity!! And yes,there are a lot of good ways to teach PHONICS so that it can be reasonably said that there is no ONE best way to teach it,and the consumer gets lured into agreeing with the cliche. BUT -- here is where the deception enters -- when an advocate of WL or any other non-phonic system says there's no one best way, he/she opens the floodgates to psycho-linguistic predicting(guessing), structural analysis (judging the length and shape of the word),substituting, skipping, memorizing words or parts, bringing one's own meaning to the task, etc., a view according all those non-reliable guessing games the same status as accurate decoding, a distortion which falls somewhere between a half-truth and an outright lie! We're talking two different meanings of the term "reading!"

Try explaining the above distinction to an unwary parent or school-board member (who might not be a phonetic reader himself), or a teacher-product of a WL training school! Also ask yourself if you would be comfortable using a doctor, lawyer, tax advisor or airline pilot who reads by context-guessing! What will tomorrow's professionals be like?

RESULTS FROM THE FIELD

The principal of Barclay Elementary, an inner city school in Baltimore, fought hard to remove WL and import the phonics-based program used in the prestigious (private)Calvert School nearby. With the Calvert curriculum in place for four years, test scores have soared from the 30th to 60th percentiles, and special-education "referrals" have gone down by three quarters!

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch visited Barclay last May. Writing in her "News & Views" publication,she raved about the inspirational academic accomplishments and learning atmosphere she saw, then took a journalistic step back and said, "What struck me is that everything going on here is the direct opposite ofconventional wisdom in schools of education!"

The above is consistent with NY experience reflected in a 1-13-97 NY Times editorial,"Betrayed in the Classroom: Learning Disabled -- or Curriculum Disabled." It quoted an experienced private-school director as being "incensed by the whole-language system of reading," and affirming that children who experience difficulty there under are not "learning-disabled, but rather "curriculum-disabled!"

A "BALANCE" Of PHONICS AND WHOLE-LANGUAGE?

Referring to the discussions about the two types of readers and "cognitive disso-nance," above, phonics teaches and demands the skills for accurate identification of each word, with well over 100 studies as proof of effect. Conversely, WL teaches just the opposite: "Predicting" (guessing)is encouraged as opposed to "sounding out," "Pony" is allowed if the print says "horse;" "house" can pass for "home,"etc; use of context clues, substitutions, etc.,relegating accurate decoding to a last resort! All with NO BACKUP RESEARCH!!!Think what such distortions can do to a science passage, or a math problem! The trail of emotional problems and attention deficit diagnoses speaks loudly. What's this "balance" illusion?

Given the above findings on teacher deficiencies, literature or no, if WL advocates are in charge of a district'sreading instruction, the likelihood of a child receiving adequate reading instruction is virtually zero! Even if"mixing" or "balancing" were possible, the evidence casts serious doubt on the system's judgement of what constitutes "balance." Can I interest anyone in a "balanced" nutrition program of equal amounts of vitamin C and arsenic?

Another WL philosophy is that children should not be subject to any reading tests or evaluation except teacher observation --and of course by the one who's doing the teaching! This explains why teachers love WL, but does it give a warm feeling of accountability?

READING RECOVERY (TM)

The "remedial" program by this name is a product of the same thinking as whole-language. It has been misrepresented and oversold. A new report, "Reading Recovery: The Claims vs The Facts," is available from the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (Grossen, 1996).

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL

"The Beginning Reading Instruction Study" is the title of a 1993 U.S. Department of Education report examining the phonics content of the fifty most widely used reading systems, AND their cost-per-student(Stein, 1993). The costs vary over a 100-to-1 range with the phonics books consistently the cheapest. On page 120 is the statement, ". . many programs provide handsome books with beautiful illustrations for the children to read, but fail to provide the instruction that will permit them to read the words in the books."

The increasingly-expensive special reading books have made billions for publishers,who founded the International Reading Association, the controlling organization since 1956. With all the special-education materials and "dumbed-down" science and history texts you see that everybody on the inside has found a money tree. But millions of children have been relegated to the academic scrap-heap, labeled with some sort of disability.

SUMMARY: WHOLE-LANGUAGE (WL) MUST GO!

Every facet/tenet of WL fails every test of validity or effectiveness. It damages children, even good readers, and promotes ideas that are false/unproven. Since WL is anti-science, co-existence with any science-based program is illusory. Its literature choices violate children's decoding ability, so "trial & error" take over. Would you let your child learn street-crossing by trial & error? We must let science decide. (Stanovich, 1993-4)

REFERENCES & RESOURCES

- Adams, Marilyn J., "Why Not Phonics and Whole Language," All Language and the Creation of Literacy, Orton Dyslexia Society, Baltimore, MD., 1991
- Blumenfeld, Samuel L., The New Illiterates, and How To Keep Your Child From Becoming One,Paradigm, Boise, ID, 1988, ISBN 0-941995-05-04
- Brunner, Michael S., Retarding America - The Imprisonment of Potential, Halcyon House, 1993 - Campbell, James, M.D., "Medical Professionals Can't Cure What Ails Many School Children," THE VALLEY NEWS, Fulton, NY, March, 28, 1996
- Cannell, John Jacob, How Public Educators Cheat on Standardized Achievement Tests, Friends for Education, Missoula, MT, 1988
- Chall, Jeanne S., Learning to Read - The Great Debate, 1967, & Updated Edition, McGraw-Hill,1983 - Chall, Jeanne S., "The New Reading Debates: Evidence from Science, Art, & Ideology," Teachers College Record, Columbia U., Winter,1992
- Coles, Gerald S., "The Learning Disability Test Battery - Empirical and Social Issues," Harvard Educational Review, August, 1978
- Flesch, Rudolf, Why Johnny Can't Read, Harper & Row, 1955 - Flesch, Rudolf, Why Johnny STILL Can't Read, Harper & Row, 1981 - Foorman, Barbara R., (a participant in the 1994 NIH conference), "Research on 'The Great Debate' over Code-oriented vs Whole-Language Approaches to Reading Instruction," University of Texas, Houston, TX 77204-5874, in press. Current research on WL vs phonics; challenge to WL community to abide by empirical proof of what works best: direct phonics.
- Kramer, Rita, Ed School Follies, The Free Press, 1991 - Grossen, Bonnie, & Coulter, Gail, "Reading Recovery: The Claims Versus the Facts," (Draft) Nat'l Ctr. to Improve the Tools of Educators, U. of OR, 1996
- Liberman, I.Y., and Liberman, A.M., "Whole Language vs. Code Emphasis: Underlying Assumptions and their Implications for Reading Instruction," Annals of Dyslexia, Orton Dyslexia Society, 1990, an elegant debunking of WL theory & philosophy
- Moats, Louisa C., "The Missing Foundation in Teacher Education," American Educator, Summer,1995
- National Right to Read Fndn., 1-800-468-8911
- National Investor's Business Daily, "Getting Schools Back on Course," Editorial, Sep. 15,1995
- Orton, Samuel T., A.M., M.D., "The 'Sight Reading' Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability," Journal of Educational Psychology, February, 1929
- Ravitch, Diane, "A Curriculum to Copy,"Network News & Views, May, 1996
- Rodgers, Geraldine E., The History of Beginning Reading, Lyndhurst, NJ, in press
- Shanker, Albert, "A Baltimore Success Story,"NY Times, Aug. 20, 1995
- Smith, Frank, UNDERSTANDING READING, 4th Ed., L. Erlbaum, NJ, 1988
- Spalding Education Foundation, 5930 W. Greenway, Ste.4, Glendale, AZ 85306, 602-547-2656,
- Spalding, Romalda, The Writing Road to Reading, 4th ed., Wm. Morrow, NY, 1990.
- Stanovich, Keith E., "Romance and Reality,"The Reading Teacher, December, 1993/Jan'94, an incisive examination of research showing the vital role of phonological awareness from studying phonics, and the lack of scientific basis for WL or the "LD" classification.
- Stein, Ph.D., Marcy, The Beginning Reading Instruction Study, 1993, U.S. GPO Stock # 065-000-00575-1
- Suzzallo, Henry, "Reading, Teaching Beginners," A CYCLOPEDIA of EDUCATION, F.Monroe, Ed, Columbia U., , 1913
- Terman, S., & Walcutt, Chas. C., Reading: Chaos and Cure, McGraw Hill, 1958
- Trace, Arthur, Reading Without Dick & Jane Regenry, Chicago, 1965
- Yarington, David J., The Great American Reading Machine, Hayden, 1978.