Reading and Language Instruction: science, ideology or …?

Which is the superior tool? A hammer or a screwdriver?
Which is the superior medicine? Penicillin or aspirin?
Which is the superior vacation place? The mountains or the seashore?

These are misleading questions. Don’t jump to answer them. Before they can be addressed, you have to have a good idea, at least, about:

a. what the potential user intends to do with the tool or with the medicine or in the vacation place;
b. whether the condition of the recipient of the user’s action is appropriate for the item chosen, for example, is it an eye infection or a headache that is being treated?
c. whether there are other tools, or medicines or vacation places available besides the two mentioned.

For years an apparent debate has been going on in schools between aficionados of two “methods” of teaching reading, the proponents of “phonics” vs. the proponents of “whole-word” reading. In English and “foreign language” classrooms, fans seem to have settled into “reading-translation” versus “audio-lingual” camps, although recently these distinctions have become blurred – no doubt reflected in the success of methods such as Rosetta Stone.

Reading people, however, still keep churning the waters, some, at times, bandying labels such as “Progressives” – to demonize the “whole-word” camp – or “Conservatives” -- to impugn the phonetics people. (This "warfare" may have more to do with commercial competition among their publishers than any personal enmity among reading theorists.)

Maybe -- as they used to chant back in the Age of Aquarius -- the rule should be “different strokes for different folks.” If so, the real sticking point is probably the school budget (or school board ignorance).

Which is the superior method? Phonics or Whole-Word?
Which is the superior approach? Audio-Lingual or Reading-Translation?

These, too, are misleading questions. Don’t jump to answer them.

Answer these questions first:

1. What outcomes are you looking for?
2. Who are the students and what languages are involved and what learning traditions have they been exposed to?
3. What other methods, or amalgams of methods are available?

To examine these issues further, see Language Ideology in Schooling Practice


Cordially
--- EGR

What is Special Education Supposed to Accomplish? Are Our Expectations Reasonable?

Let’s consider two forms, extreme, no doubt, of state sponsored education:

Type A: every person gets exactly, precisely, the same education; they are treated as if they were in no way different; or,
Type B.Every single person is treated as if he or she were in all aspects different from all others -- educational plans would individualized down to the individual.

Some further explanation:

1. Type A will provide 10,000 (or, whatever) hours of a fixed curriculum to the student, irregardless of that student’s age, sex, religion, physical condition, or social background.
2. Type B would consider all the things disregarded by Type A and include also so things as student likes, dislikes, desires, preferences, moods, memory, inclinations, knacks, whims, etc.

Note the following things:

a. for neither type of education would there be “special education.”; type A rules it out; type B goes far beyond what special education would do.
b. Type A would probably be quite cheaper than Type B.
Type B would not only be very expensive but it is far from clear where the instructional services would come from or what would count as a curriculum.
c. People would probably reject both types as undesirable but for very different reasons.

What would some of those reasons be? Could you flesh out these two types so as to make it more obvious what their good or bad points are?

What is so good about our schools now that type A or B would be unacceptable? What is so bad about them that special education is necessary?

To examine these issues further, see Special Education: misgivings and reconsiderations


Cordially
--- EGR