Was There “A War Against Reading”? Is There Still?

How shall children be taught to read--Phonics or Whole Word? That’s the central debate behind the feud known as the Reading Wars.

What’s not debatable is that literacy has taken thunderous hits over the past 80 years. Everyone knows the scary stats, mainly, that this country has 50 million functional illiterates. Is this accidental? Or somebody’s idea of shrewd social policy?

All the evidence points in one direction. Eighty years ago, the people at the top, including elite educators, were terrified of massive immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and social upheaval. Some leaders apparently decided that slowing things down would be prudent. What better way than to dumb down the schools? Undermining reading was very likely a part of that strategy. Perhaps they believed they were doing the best thing for the society’s long-term stability. In which case they were tragically short-sighted. We don’t need dumb and dumber. More than ever, we need smart and smarter.

In sum, I believe all the evidence confirms that there was indeed an assault on reading. I’ve just finished a new article for Improve-Education.org titled “The War Against Reading.” It’s a long piece with many quotes from the main players, but I can state the gist of it in one sentence: educators turned away from the tried and true known as Phonics; and embraced a new pedagogy, Whole Word, that simply does not work.

How could our experts be so wrong-headed? English is a phonetic/alphabetic language. The normal way to teach such a language is phonetically--children are taught to see the sounds in the words. What the educators did was counter-intuitive: they scrapped phonics and introduced Whole Word, where children have to memorize words by their shapes, the way Chinese characters are learned.

Memorizing thousands of word-shapes is extremely difficult. People with excellent memories can learn to read using Whole Word but it’s hard work. Children with ordinary memories are simply doomed.

The War Against Reading” is built around this chronology:

1920’s: Whole Word first widely used.

1928: Dr. Samuel Orton reports on serious problems in a research study titled “ The Sight Reading Method of Teaching Reading, as a Source of Reading Disability.”

1930’s: Top educators push for nationwide use of Dick-and-Jane-type readers. “See Dick run!” Such books incorporate Whole Word theory.

1955: Rudolph Flesch explains falling literacy in “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”

1970’s: Reading theorists Ken Goodman and Frank Smith lead counter-attack against Flesch by devising new defenses for Whole Word.

1990’s: Reading scores continue to plunge. Dyslexia is widespread. Home schooling surges in popularity. Phonics makes come-back.

As far as I can figure it out, the top educators sought a more managed, more Socialist society. I think it’s fair to say they were blinded by their ideology. In any event, the policies they embraced backfired. The so-called Reading Wars have resulted in tens of millions of walking wounded and a weaker country. Indeed, a recent government study concluded that the public schools are a threat to the nation’s economy. Perhaps that was the goal all along.

There’s another terrible side effect: vast billowing clouds of disinformation, sophistry, deceit, propaganda, jargon, pseudo-psychiatry, and disingenuousness. Imagine a man caught cheating on his wife. He lies, then invents bigger lies. He entangles his friends in the deception: they lie to protect him. So it was, I believe, for the educators pushing Whole Word. Can they suddenly say, oops! No, they are even now fighting a rear-guard action with Balanced Literacy and Sight Words, where they hang on to as much of their mischief as possible. (In a parallel story, Rudolph Flesch and Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld concluded that most so-called dyslexia is caused by Whole Word instruction; but many organizations and sites blithely ignore this option and pretend that dyslexia is genetic.)

The endless disinformation has been successful. I rarely meet even educated professionals who have any grasp of the Reading Wars. A lawyer insisted, “I refuse to believe that anyone would not teach phonics.” When I explained, “That’s the problem. Many schools did refuse to teach phonics,” the lawyer said, “I refuse to believe that anyone would not teach phonics.” It’s people like this who keep me writing. I want everyone to understand what a huge deception has been perpetrated.

We are not going to have improvement in education until we strip away all the nonsense. Even Russia, in the 1960’s, had its epiphany involving Stalin’s reign of terror; mistakes were acknowledged. What we really need is a god-that-failed memoir where a top educator sketches out what the real thoughts and motives were. In the meantime, I’m not optimistic our educators will snap out of it. So I’m urging the business community to be much more involved. To take a dominant role whenever possible.

I’m eager to explain all these topics--if somebody can use an interview or an article, I’m available.

The War Against Reading” is article #30 on Improve-Education.org. For people with only a few minutes, I made a video for YouTube.com--just search the title: Phonics vs. Whole Word.