[published in Invisible Serfs Collar on topic — Rejecting Reading to Avoid . . . ]
Polarization Defines The “Reading Wars”
It’s a persistent annoyance that educators divide so readily into opposing camps.
This certainly does not happen in any other field where practitioners call themselves “professional”; Medicine, Engineering, etc. seem to have evolved standard practices, which on the whole govern their behavior with their clients. Why is Education so different? Probably, it’s not a real profession?
At any rate, the Reading Wars are again flaming — this time in Australia.
Education was an election issue during the campaign after which a new Coalition government was elected last year, replacing Labor. The National Curriculum was seen by many as having been unduly shaped by Fabianism — an active movement aimed at bringing about socialism through gradualism and permeation. Julia Gillard, once an Education Minister and then Prime Minister of Australia, was a member of the Fabian Society.
The new government launched a Review of the curriculum and produced a Report in August 2014. Among the headlines were these two: “Australia to require the phonics method” & “Education minister orders universities to teach phonics or face losing accreditation.”
It wasn’t long before divisions and cleavages sprang to the fore from activists within the education field.
As one who has long been baffled and exasperated by educator lack of agreement on standard practices and the dumping of methods, which do work, I think a close look at the dynamics as playing out in Australia would be very revealing. Especially for those of us who see political groups using schools as fronts for their agendas.
Let’s just look at one example:
Here is a critique from a prominent teacher educator and a prolific writer of papers and books on Literacy — from a critical theory point of view (ie, leftist) — Direct Instruction is not a solution for Australian schools http://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=439
Right away the author, Allan Luke, mischaracterizes phonics and direct instruction as “operant conditioning” and “deskilling” of teachers. It didn’t take long for some commentators to strongly object:
– Having had my mind poisoned against DI during [teacher training] I never considered it until I searched for evidence for what worked with children for whom nothing seemed to work!
– Direct Instruction does not deskill teachers.
– . . . mountains of research show DI to be effective when implemented well . . . DI is simply sound instruction.
– Every year I present lectures to teacher education students and find that they are already indoctrinated with the mantra “constructivism good, direct instruction bad”. When I show them the results of these meta-analyses [Hattie], they are stunned, and they often become angry at having been given an agreed set of truths and commandments against direct instruction.
– I am sick of DI being labeled as a right-wing conspiracy and watching failing students just getting failure as an education.
If we could just untangle this enigma — find the real reasons for withholding proven reading methods — then maybe we can get back to teaching children, all children, the basic skills they need for fulfilling educational experiences.