Interesting artical regarding reading instruction

[George Cunningham <gkc@LOUISVILLE.EDU>]

New professor at UW carries the flag for phonics
                7:24 PM 1/13/02
                Anita Clark
                Wisconsin State Journal

                Welcome to another round of the reading wars.
                The federal education bill signed into law this month by
                President Bush includes an ambitious federal commitment
                to teaching reading. It's expected to emphasize phonics,
                the approach that teaches children the relationship between
                letters and sounds. Debate has simmered for years between
                phonics advocates and proponents of the whole-language
                method, which generally encourages children to figure out
                a word's meaning from its context or clues in a story and
                pictures.

                Mark Seidenberg, a new psychology professor at UW-Madison,
                is ready to lead the phonics troops. He was one of five
                experts commissioned by the American Psychological
                Association to write a scholarly paper assessing what
                psychology and linguistics research says about reading
                and instruction. He's also written an article for the March
                issue of Scientific American on how reading should be
                taught.

                His message is simple: Whole-language instruction is a
                failure, an experiment dreamed up in an ivory tower, peddled
                by celebrity educators and inflicted on unwitting children
                and parents. Who says so? "An overwhelming pile of research
                favoring phonics," according to Seidenberg.

                Beginning readers already know how sounds relate to meaning.
                When they learn that alphabet symbols represent the sounds
                of language, they learn to read, Seidenberg said.
                Despite the research, reading instruction "became very
                politicized and ideological," he said, with conservatives
                lined up behind phonics and liberals espousing
                whole-language approaches. The whole-language camp
                doesn't trust the science, he said. "You can't base these
                things on ideas about intuition," Seidenberg said.

                Legislation like the federal bill and similar state efforts
                will be helpful, he said, to ensure "at least a reasonable
                emphasis on phonics everywhere."

                Seidenberg doesn't blame teachers; he blames schools of
                education. When he talked to educators in California, where
                he taught until last summer, "they thought I was from Mars.
                They thought I was the enemy. They were interested in
                 teaching literature. It's two cultures. The science goes
                one way and the ed schools tend to go another way."

                Phonics never disappeared, he said, it just got pushed out
                of the classroom. Parents turned to private phonics
                programs, tutors and computer software. (Critics say phonics
                is boring; Seidenberg says  watch how long children will
                play computer phonics games.)

                Parents need to demand phonics instruction, he said, and ask
                exactly what it means if their school says it offers a
                balanced approach.  "I personally think it isn't a political
                issue," he said. "It's a question of what's the best way to
                teach and making sure educators don't just try out ideas
                because they seem clever to them in their ivory towers."


George K. Cunningham
University of Louisville

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