Hopefully, Reading Wars, will fade away ? ? ? Below is a comment I made to a post by Greg Ashman’s blog, Australia , Filling the Pail, Jan 15, 2020.
This decade, starting with 2020, may just be the period when the Reading Wars might see some resolution. After a half-century of battle! In the United States there is a lot of pent-up anxiety about the state of reading — not the least coming from the advocacy groups demanding an end to the school-to-prison-pipeline — citing statistics of over 70% illiterates in the prison population. There have been many articles in popular magazines and newspapers highlighting reading problems.
Coincidentally to Greg’s post today, just yesterday a popular US educator site also brings up the topic of the Reading Wars. See Jay P Greene’s Blog https://jaypgreene.com/2020/01/14/whole-leech-uage-instruction/#comment-709056 The guest writer, Greg Forster, decidedly takes a position against one of the two sides (he is for phonics against whole language). The comments will be of interest to readers of Greg Ashman’s blog. (BTW, thanks Greg A for your detailed analysis in your post.)
Scanning the 25-page paper by Jeffrey Bowers I note his conclusion: “The ‘reading wars’ that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterized as a draw. The conclusion should not be that we should be satisfied with either systematic phonics or whole language, but rather teachers and researchers should consider alternative methods of reading instruction.” Interesting!