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

Radical Teacher, Spring, 2004 by Sondra Cuban

The absence of multiple perspectives on reading is also intolerable to these authors. Garan and Coles shed light on the lack of diversity among the panel members in terms of ideology, and the fact that there were no reading teachers who were on it. The real biases of the panel members are not accounted for in the NRP report.

This information would be especially important, since the reports have made recommendations that benefited major commercial publishers and government officials. This predisposition, according to Garan and Coles, influenced the kinds of studies that were selected for review, the definitions that were applied, and their recommendations for policy. Arguments about the panel's unofficial ties, reputations, status, fields, and need to receive subsequent funding is too persuasive to be considered paranoid by Whole Language advocates. Yet at the same time, as Garan and Coles have emphasized, the criteria for selecting and analyzing the studies, plus, the recommendations are too discombobulated to be considered a real coup. Coles leans heavily on Joanna Yatvin's analysis of the conditions of putting together the Report. Yatvin, a panel member, has discussed the process of publishing and how the study yielded hurried, incomplete findings and recommendations as a result of being pushed to get it out quick. Also there were some real differences in views and allegiances expressed by subcommittee members. This backdrop makes the report both controversial and confusing to be applied in policy and practice across-the-board or uniformly. Yatvin wrote a chilling online piece in Phi Delta Kappan (2002) about the process of the NRP study; in which she describes in detail the behind-the-scenes negotiations and points out major conceptual problems of the study. One problem was the use of only one model of reading. Another one is that no compass was used for guiding their knowledge bases. They also used one method, meta-analysis, for too many diverse, incomparable studies. In addition, the work was published too early and was viewed as definitive rather than unfinished. Furthermore, the studies were not really re-checked for accuracy. Yatvin, and many of the authors of the four books have made strong cases that the decision to use a scientific reading model rather than a social constructionist framework could be considered a pre-censoring activity that limited the amount of studies, the methods, the experts, and the types of findings that could glean real lessons about reading. From a research perspective, with better triangulation (see, Norman Denzin's work for example), of methods and theories, the panel might have come up with more expansive findings and results, as well as recommendations. All of these critiques, of course, raise doubts about the current focus on evidence-based research, another theme in these books.