Reading Wars — Is It Ethical To Keep Spreading The Damage?
Which other field other than education would allow their patients, clients or students to suffer harm from withholding best practice?
A review of Jeanne Chall’s many positive contributions to advancing the art and science of teaching to read brings forth ethical questions — still unresolved. Many questions are being posed why functional illiteracy still persists, especially amongst certain groups: racial minority children, boys and children in poverty.
Unfortunately it is an ideologically polarized “war” that continues to affect the reading scores and lives of many children. Discussion of the issues is to invite strong feelings, which hinder forthright action.
In the forward to the paperback edition of Chall’s book, “The Academic Achievement Challenge” (2002) the foreword by Marilyn Jager Adams has this to say:
“ . . . reviewing the research on phonics, Chall told me that if I wrote the truth, I would lose old friends and make new enemies. She warned me that I would never again be fully accepted by my academic colleagues . . . Sadly, however, as the evidence in favor of systematic, explicit phonics instruction for beginners increased, so too did the vehemence and nastiness of the backlash. The goal became one of discrediting not just the research, but the integrity and character of those who had conducted it. Chall was treated most shabbily . . . “
Now, we are hearing about an enthusiastic program by various philanthropic and government agencies (World Bank, World Vision, etc.) to spread literacy to underdeveloped countries. There is a toolkit available, but within the very document — EARLY GRADE READING. ASSESSMENT TOOLKIT. March 30, 2009 — is this one hint of predictable trouble ahead:
“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.”
What’s to be done? Isn’t there a “right to know” that a community at the receiving end of a do-good project should have access to — pros and cons? Aren’t there any ethical protocols that guide projects in developing countries that are mounted by outsiders? I have no means to warn these countries or to stall these do-gooders from exporting foreign wars, albeit reading wars without bloodshed, into innocent countries. I’m just a granny seeing the education field being horribly irresponsible, for rich and poor countries alike. It’s ALL children who are denied the power of reading who are poorer. And society!
If the education system is still full of nastiness, as it was for Jeanne Chall, is there any hope? Then “the system” needs to be abandoned.