ome concerned parents, for various reasons, still have their children in the government schools. For such parents, there are many pressing questions. One important example is the question of the whole language approach to reading instruction.
ome concerned parents, for various reasons, still have their children in the government schools. For such parents, there are many pressing questions. One important example is the question of the whole language approach to reading instruction.
Only one response is appropriate, which is, "not with my kid, you don't." One of the most fundamental tasks in all of education is the impartation of literacy -- the ability to read fluently . If this is not done properly, the child will suffer for it through the rest of his life. And in this regard, the whole language approach to literacy is nothing less than an impending disaster.
Nevertheless, this method can appear as an angel of light. Whole language instruction encourages the child to "read for meaning." Whole language encourages an examination of the larger context through reading whole books. Whole language discourages a fixation with the sounds of individual letters, and the meaning of individual words. It de-emphasizes "getting at words." It denies objective meaning for words, and places each student in the position of "creating meanings" for the text. In short, whole language is nothing other than deconstructionist literary theory in short pants and with a Barney-the-dinosaur lunch bucket.
To teach a child to read properly is not difficult. Local education professionals have made it seem difficult, and the entire process has been shrouded with arcane professional terminology. But the only term that concerned parents need to know and understand is phonics .
English is a phonetic language. This means, fundamentally, that the letters in each word have an organized relationship with the sound of each word. For various reasons, mostly having to do with people like William the Conqueror, this organization is not completely tidy. English is not like Algebra; there are variations and exceptions. Take for example, the word one . How on earth do we get the wuh sound out of there? Or compare the ough in through, bough, though, cough, rough , etc. It represents oo , ow , oh , off , and uff respectively. Remarkable language we have here.
Such phonetic quirks have been used by proponents of whole language as evidence that children will just be bewildered and bored if we attempt to drill them in the sounds of all the letters. But still, quirks and all, it is possible (and relatively easy ) for the average child to memorize the basic phonetic sounds, learn to decode every word from left to right, and then have immediate access to countless written words which he already knows in their spoken form. Put another way, in schools that teach phonics, no illiterates come out of first grade. In the government schools, hundreds of thousands of graduates from the twelfth grade cannot read their own diplomas.
Short of complete illiteracy, there are several other common indicators that a child has been taught badly. One of them is found in that much abused term dyslexia . When children are not carefully drilled to make automatic and careful distinctions between letters with a similar appearance, say between b and d , or p and q , then they do not make those distinctions. When they continue to confuse such letters on into the upper grades, they can soon find themselves labelled dyslexic , and slapped into a (well-funded) special program. Such students need a special program all right -- a well-run first-grade classroom, with a teacher who knows how to teach reading.
Such remarkable failures, however, have not caused any significant pedagogical repentance on the part of the education establishment. The culprit behind all of this (the "look-say" method) has now been dressed up in Sunday clothes, surrounded by a larger context of real books, and called the whole language approach.
Because our local Christian school emphasizes the reading of good books (as opposed to basal readers), our superintendent regularly has to tell people that we do not use the whole language approach. There should be no mistake about it; not only is the whole language approach a horrible method of teaching, it is also subtle and deceitful. No one will come to a parent and ask for permission to scramble their children's brains. But that is what happens.
Once a young Christian man, a recent education graduate of a state university, applied to our school for a teaching position. During the board interview, I wanted to check his understanding of the whole language approach which he had been taught, so I asked him what he would do in the following scenario. "Suppose one of your students were shown the letters h-o-r-s-e . Suppose further he read the word as pony . What would you say to him?" The young man said that he would praise the student, and tell him he had done a good job. After all, to nitpick about individual letters and words would not be consistent with an emphasis on "whole language."
At the root, the whole language approach is simply another part of our rebellious culture's on-going revolt against objective meaning. This rebellion hates objective meaning because it implies absolutes, and absolutes come from God. Our government schools have required the separation of God and school. The end of this process is the separation of objective meaning and school, or put another way, the separation of education and school.
We are not at the end of the road, but we can see it from here.
