"Reading Don't Fix No Chevys': Literacy in the Lives of Young Men

Radical Teacher, Spring, 2004 by Sondra Cuban

"READING DON'T FIX NO CHEVYS": LITERACY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG MEN

By Michael W. Smith and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Heinemann, 2002.

LITERACY AS SNAKE OIL: BEYOND THE QUICK FIX

By Joanne Larson, Colin Lankshear, and Michele Knobel, eds. Peter Lang, 2002.

READING THE NAKED TRUTH: LITERACY, LEGISLATION AND LIES

By Gerald Coles. Heinemann, 2003.

RESISTING READING MANDATES: HOW TO TRIUMPH WITH THE TRUTH

By Elaine M. Gaxan. Heinemann, 2002.

During my visit to your classroom this morning I noticed many supplemental books from either [names specific materials] or other materials maybe from your reading recovery stock. I asked you when these books are used and you said that you teach with Open Court and use these other books also.

It is very important to utilize only the Open Court materials during the prescribed reading time and no other trade books during the directed teacher lessons except for those books that Open Court recommends to complement the modules. It is obvious that you continued to do your own program. It is insubordinate [sic] to refuse to implement the Open Court reading program as prescribed.

Your training in the area of reading is extensive and I respect your need to utilize your training but in lieu of the fact that we are an Open Court school, mandatory that the script be followed.

Thank you for your immediate compliance to this direction.

(Principal to teacher, personal communication, 1999, in Gutierrez p. 115, Snake Oil).

Who controls curriculum and instruction in an evidence-based education era? Conflicts of interests are dramatically played out--in practice, in research, in theory, and on the policy level--in four books which highlight a national reading tragedy: Literacy as Snake Oil, Reading the Naked Truth, Reading Don't Fix no Chevys and Resisting Reading Mandates. Reading these together, one could experience great disenchantment about the state of reading in the U.S. The authors amplify "truths" about reading, and carefully strip down the staging and scripts of glorified national reading policies, to expose major defects. Sadly, this isn't a theater performance, but a disturbing reality. These four books intensely recap the "reading wars" that were recently catalyzed by 21st century evidence-based research by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Research Council (the highly promoted, elusive NRP, or, Report of the National Reading Panel, of 2000, which followed on the heels of the more lucid, but limited, 1998 report, Preventing Reading Difficulties by Snow, Burns, and Griffin). They poignantly question dominant assumptions about reading, and move beyond the polarized debate over practice, research, and theory.

Critiques of national reading policies have been crisply summarized in a previous Educational Researcher article in 2000. The authors of this article (Taylor, Anderson, Au & Raphael, 2000) outlined four problems of this type of research: "First the text created by these researchers focuses on word-level processing rather than on reading. Second, it connotes a perspective of deprivation rather than difference. Third, the text equates instructional methods with teaching. Fourth, it substitutes training for professional development: (p. 17). The authors of these four books elaborate these problems, and spotlight reading as a cultural process rather than a hard-wired trait that scientific medical models of reading research take for granted. They also critique the hasty connections that have been made among this kind of research, practice, and policy, and override the slick advice on "training boosts" and, "balanced reading instruction." They provide alternative and contrary evidence for reading problems of children. Examples of the subversive strategies employed by both teachers and students to resist compliance with dominant reading practices (that have been dictated on all levels) are also interwoven into the texts. This review will focus on the themes that are highlighted in these four books, from different vantage points.

Teachers, who know that they can be blamed for low reading scores rather than policy makers, react to these policies by negotiating them, rather than implementing them wholesale. In Kris Guiterrez's provocative chapter, "Smoke and Mirrors: Language Policy and Educational Reform" in Literacy as Snake Oil, the teacher tries to make the content interesting to his students, by supplementing the required basal reading series with other materials. Yet, he is caught and reprimanded by the principal who is trying to act in accordance with district policies. Patricia Irvine and Joanne Larson, in a powerful chapter in Snake Oil, judiciously document the construction of reading deficits in classrooms where teachers do comply with the commercial reading package programs. Stories of other teachers who are more covert, and who openly resist the curriculum, are told too. One teacher, Lynn Asterita Gatto, who received a major award from the White House, writes about her experience of using alternative materials and methods in Snake Oil. She decides to ignore the supplementary materials of the dictated basal materials given to her, like "overheads, charts, sentence strips, paperback sets and tapes" (72). Instead, she chooses problem-based materials, like a vivarium project, and public library and school library materials to teach, as well as Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). She discusses how a critical pedagogical approach to reading and learning strengthens children's critical thinking abilities. Yet, these outcomes are not normally prized so much as higher test scores. The seduction of quick fix solutions is challenged in the eight Snake Oil essays, which highlight the devastating effects of these highly promoted reading programs in many types of classrooms.