HEARTS AND MINDS AND
LITERACY: LESSONS FROM
OURSELVES
MEM FOX
I don't look like a soldier. I carry no guns and I'm not dressed in battle fatigues, but I'm fighting. I'm fighting a battle on behalf of the development of literacy. As a peace‑child of the 1960s I'm unhappy about using the metaphor of war, but in my current state of passion I see no purpose in making peace with groups of people whose idleness or financial self‑interest is killing literacy, or at least causing its stunted growth. Politeness has hitherto proven to be ineffective so I have decided, from now on, not to water down my remarks. I intend to write from the heart and with feeling.
My adversaries in the trenches across the barbed wire are education professors and reading specialists who haven't kept up‑to‑date, and educational publishers who produce basal readers designed specifically to teach reading and writing. I'll begin by setting my sights on the publishers.
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ReplyDeleteThis is quite an interesting post. I gather from your discourse that you believe in the Whole-Language approach to teaching reading, which is why you are opposed to books written specifically to teach reading. To a great extent, I agree that reading cannot be separated from content area knowledge. In fact, there would be little understanding of text if students were only taught how to pronounce the words, without a demonstration of meaning.
ReplyDeleteA core element of comprehension is that students read words to get meaning, in the right context and this can only happen if books are written in such a way as to provide context clues for meaning. Simply reading a word in isolation does not aid in comprehending the word. While I do agree that decoding, phonic skills and structural analysis are important, I agree that books should not focus only on these aspects of reading. The Constructivist or Whole-Language Viewpoint, “holds that children develop language naturally in environments that support meaningful and purposeful language usage.” Such is the view of Carnine, Silbert, Kame’enui & Tarver, (2004), in their book Direct Instruction Reading, 4th Edition.