[There was a time when people started challenging the habit (technique) of educators to mystify. Mystification was identified as an obstacle standing in the way of parents trying to understand what was going on in education. And, a barrier to their meaningful participation in consultation and decision-making. There was an inkling of understanding. Nonetheless, parents still continue to be mystified, and driven "crazy" by ongoing system-led changes to education. To stretch the concern further, here is my theory — this confusion is a deliberate way not only to keep parents at bay and out of the picture while "transformation" of education proceeds but is also a means, via "discovery" methods and other confusing means, to weaken the foundation of early "primary" and "elementary" education altogether rather than to ensure it's strength? This goes back over a 100 years when John Dewey enunciated, and started the slide down the rabbit-hole, as he proclaimed that foundation-building of skills in primary education was a "fetish", a "perversion" — that is, a fixation and not a necessary building block of learning? My comment to SQE about a government sanctioned communiqué to parents about reading in Ontario — Bats in their Belfries http://www.societyforqualityeducation.org/index.php/blog/read/bats-in-their-belfries ]
Crazy-Making Education Reform
Yet another education absurdity is brought forward for our attention — avoiding letter-sound rules in the teaching of beginning reading.
The flyer — The Facts on Education: How Children Learn to Read – http://www.cea-ace.ca/sites/cea-ace.ca/files/cea-2011-foe-learn-read.pdf — is such a mish-mash ! People who know the field rather well find a number of inconsistencies, omissions and ambiguities, which, if followed, would be rather counterproductive to teaching youngsters to read. This flyer was broadcast widely in Ontario public school systems and especially targeted for parent-teacher connections.
The flyer is obviously a public relations product — designed probably for well-meaning purposes but hardly of a standard a reading teacher or committed parent would find helpful. One such expert has concluded that the authors of the flyer have “bats in their belfries” and “clearly don’t have a clue”.
What is troubling in the flyer is that we are led to believe that any of a number of “different ways” can be used to teach reading. Today, however, we do know a lot more about successful methods and discredited methods. Research literature clearly shows that a phonics approach can be highly successful in teaching reading, to both boys and girls and to special needs children. This is not the achievement level attained by the other major approach, the whole-language approach, which figures indicate somewhere around 60% functional literacy level.
What is even more disturbing is what I heard at a Comparative Education conference March 10 this year. There is to be in the next few years a massive world campaign to promote teaching of reading to children in developing countries. The work has been done — needs assessment tools have been field-tested — protocols for community involvement have been mapped out, etc. What remains is for the Ministries of Education of the developing nations to then adopt the methods for implementing the reading programs.
BUT, the literature involved already foresees a problem — “The reading ‘wars’ are alive and well in many low-income countries, often miring ministries of education and teaching centers in seemingly endless debates between the ‘whole-language’ and ‘phonics-based’ approaches.” (pg 11 of 1st edition , 2009, EGRA toolkit. The 2nd edition, 2016, does not have that sentence. Nonetheless, when I talked to some people they said it was always a policy to be set by a Ministry of Education as to which method(s) were to be chosen.)
The point I am aiming at is this — upon knowing the difference between highly successful teaching methods and less stellar methods how ethical is it to promote, or even keep talk, talking, about those methods which have poor yields and also, at the same time, spin-off secondary industries in remediation — both at school levels and college levels?
There is some other agenda at play here. Is it political? Is it related to ensuring safe jobs for the industry? This quandary is certainly maddening and absolutely a cause for considerable frustration for parents.
I have been involved for over 45 years in this effort to get more parent/consumer satisfaction from our education systems, and truly, the deafness to, and sabotage of, successful methods is painful to bear. It certainly is enough to make one think twice about trying to reform an unresponsive education system, which seems to exploit opportunities more for self interest than for clients. The matter of ethics and conscience are raised. Accountability is definitely missing in the equation between client and producer sides in public education.