Re: Interesting artical regarding reading instruction

[kber <kber@EARTHLINK.NET>]

George

I haven't seen who else hs responded.  But doesn't it bother you a little that
APA commissions someone to write a report when the guy has already committed
himself on the issue he is supposedly studying?  I thought that as scholars we
looked at the evidence first

Ken Bernstein

George Cunningham wrote:

> 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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