Whole Language, Half an Education?

Insight on the News, Feb 8, 1999 by Gayle M.B. Hanson

For years, California kids have been taught to read via a technique called `whole language.' Critics say the method has failed miserably and are ready to close the book.

Remember Dick and Jane? Their admittedly bland adventures were the basis of phonics, a time-honored method of reading education that taught students to sound out words by understanding phonetic sounds. But while anyone who graduated from high school before 1980 likely remembers the drills and letter-sound awareness they were taught, a whole generation of American children does not. The truth of the matter is that they were taught to read through a system called "whole language" and now the fact of the matter is they don't know how to read.

Fewer than 40 percent of the nation's fourth-graders are reading at their grade level, according to the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress in Reading test. And the numbers increase dramatically for minority students.

Not surprisingly, a backlash against the whole-language approach is sweeping the country, with legislators in more than half the nation's states adopting policies designed to get phonics-based reading programs back into the classroom. Since 1990, 101 bills have been proposed to mandate phonics. Now the California State Board of Education has mandated a return to phonics as the basis for its reading programs. Because of the size of the state, that decision is expected to have a huge influence on textbook publishers, who must revamp current reading programs to meet the mandated changes.

Traditional reading education, or phonics, once began with lessons that focused on the sounding out of individual and then combinations of letters, controlled vocabulary and short reading passages, along with skill exercises. But by the 1980s that approach largely was shelved in favor of whole-language learning -- a reading method that stresses that children use language in ways that relate to their own lives. Students are encouraged to figure out the meaning of words by their context. They look at pictures and guess at words. As for spelling, that's something that will come along with time. Forget the McGuffey Readers; instead, students are encouraged to keep journals and write letters. Instead of being taught to read, they are encouraged to discover reading. It doesn't work.

"I like to make the analogy between learning to read and playing the piano," said phonics advocate and reading tutor Julie Anders. "If you are serious about playing the piano you really have to practice to learn fluency so that your fingers just fly over the keys. In learning to read you must learn to run your eyes over the letters in the same way."

At the root of the Golden State's "new" standards for grades 1-12 is a return to the use of phonics as the principal tool by which to teach children to read. But many people believe that a whole generation of youngsters has been lost in one of the most disastrous educational experiments on record.

In recent years Californians have grappled with reintroducing phonics into the classroom, and legislative initiatives backing phonics-based teaching has received growing support. But Deweyite academics who are responsible for the reading mess wouldn't say "no" to whole language despite the overwhelming body of evidence showing its methods may well have handicapped an entire generation of American children.

"This has been a tough, hard battle," says Marion Joseph, a liberal Democrat and member of the California State Board of Education who has spent the last decade working alongside conservative Republicans to get phonics back into the classroom. "Having been the nation's leader in the giant experiment into untested theoretical learning," he says, "it is now our obligation to climb out of the hole and have instructional programs based on real scientific evidence. And the evidence is that phonics works."

Few California parents, left or right, are happy about the quality of public education being offered there. According to the California State University system, which operates 22 colleges throughout the state, more than half of all entering freshmen need remedial help in both mathematics and English. That number is the highest it has been in the decade since the system started tracking the number of students. Couple that statistic with the results of statewide testing showing that close to 60 percent of all fourth-graders in the state were reading at below grade level, and the evidence appears overwhelming that something's wrong in the classroom.

While some blame the diversity of the student body, the lack of resources available for education and what teachers claim is an increase in the amount of time they must spend disciplining and supporting students, many believe the real culprit is the whole-language system adopted by the state in 1987. Since that time teachers and administrators have been pitted against each other in the so-called "reading wars."

"Whole language is a system that teaches students to look at the big picture and doesn't really give them the tools to understand what they are doing," says Ann Edwards, a 20-year teaching veteran, who is leading a class of first-graders in California. "We're told over and over that we have such a diverse population that things are different here ... that our students are just not going to do as well. That is simply not true. I know that when I was using phonics to teach students to read I had a first-rate class that was excited, happy and engaged in discovery. Now my students are disaffected and unhappy. I can teach a child to read with phonics in about two months; with whole language you invite the child to learn to read. You don't give them any rules, you don't give them any guidelines. The students are in charge and, frankly, the students should not be in charge."