Post by RS Davis on Nov 19, 2003 23:29:24 GMT -5
By Onkar Ghate
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide test to
assess the abilities of elementary and middle-school children, are out. Though math
scores showed some improvement over the last decade, reading scores did not. This should
not be surprising. There will be no fundamental improvement in children's ability to
read until educators abandon the whole-language "method" of reading in favor strictly of
phonics. Unfortunately, the dominant view among educators is that because "reading is
such a complex and multifaceted activity," in the words of Dr. Catherine Snow, professor
of education at Harvard, "no single method is the answer." This is like saying that
because eating is "such a complex and multifaceted activity," no single principle can
guide us, and that a proper diet must therefore contain a mixture of food and poison.
The controversy over how to teach reading is not a narrow, technical dispute. It is a
broad, philosophical disagreement, with crucial educational implications. The phonics
proponents maintain that human knowledge is gained objectively, by perceiving the facts
of reality and by abstracting from those facts. These proponents, therefore, teach the
child the basic facts--the sounds that make up every word--from which the abstract
knowledge of how to read can be learned.
The whole-language supporters, by contrast, believe that the acquisition of knowledge is
a subjective process. Influenced by John Dewey and his philosophy of Progressive
education, they believe that the child must be encouraged to follow his feelings
irrespective of the facts, and to have his arbitrary "opinions" regarded as valid. On
this premise, the child is told to treat the "whole word" as a primary, and to draw his
conclusions without the necessity of learning the underlying facts. He is taught this--
in spite of the overwhelming evidence, in theory and in practice, that phonics works and
whole-language does not.
In learning to speak, a child has already performed a tremendous cognitive feat. To
read, he must now grasp the connection between the black marks he sees on paper--which
to him are like hieroglyphs--and the spoken words he already understands. Phonics
systematically teaches a child to break the code of written language.
Spoken language is made up of discrete units of sound, called phonemes, like the "b"
sound in "bat" or "boy." Phonics teaches a child to break down spoken words into their
phonemes and to symbolize them by written letters. The child learns how to sound out
each word through its component letters. Reducing reading to a manageable set of rules
quickly enables a child to read almost any word--and to experience reading as something
easy and pleasurable and mind-opening.
This is what whole-language supporters condemn as "constraining" and "uncreative."
Analyzing language by abstract rules that connect phonemes to letters, one of them says
dismissively, imposes "an uptight, must-be-right model of literacy."
Instead, they argue that the child ought to focus on an entire written word,
like "hospital" or "boomerang," and learn it as the teacher pronounces it. Having no
method to reduce the tens of thousands of written words to a manageable set of rules,
however, the child must treat each word as a unique symbol to be memorized--an
impossible feat.
What is the child to do when he encounters a word he has not yet memorized? He must
guess. Here is what some whole-language advocates suggest the child do: "Look at the
pictures" (what if the book does not contain pictures?); "Ask a friend" (is reading not
a solitary activity?); "Look for patterns" (why not systematically teach him "patterns,"
that is, phonics?); "Substitute another word" (is this teaching?). Conspicuously absent
is: "Look in a dictionary"--because the child crippled by whole-language cannot read a
dictionary.
Whatever twisted mental processes the child is supposed to go through, it is a
linguistic corruption to call this a method of reading.
The use of whole-language results in nothing but illiteracy. (California, for example,
which tried this approach in the late '80s, abandoned it after reading scores
plummeted.) The seeming "successes" of whole-language occur only when phonics is
smuggled in--that is, when the child (on his own or with the help of teachers or
parents) secretly decodes written language by discovering that, say, the
words "banana," "boat" and "box," which he has memorized, have a similar initial sound
and begin with the same letter.
What our schools need is not "moderation," but pure phonics. We would not consider
adding contaminated food to a child's diet for the sake of "balance." We should likewise
avoid harming his mind by "balancing" phonics with whole-language.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Onkar Ghate, Ph.D. in Philosophy, is a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, in
Irvine , CA. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of *Atlas
Shrugged* and *The Fountainhead*.
Copyright © 2003 Ayn Rand® Institute
This article is copyrighted by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), and cannot be reprinted
without permission except for non-commercial, self-study or educational purposes. We
encourage you to forward this op-ed to friends, family, associates or interested parties
who would want to receive it for these purposes only . Any reproduction of this article
must contain the above copyright notice. Those interested in reprinting or
redistributing this article for any other purposes should contact media@aynrand.org.
This article may not be forwarded to media for publication.
