Whole Language Education should be banished!

[Yes]

Dr. Onkar Ghate has been vocal against the effects of Whole Language Education on our students.

I went to school and learned to read from 1954 to 1966. We learned using the Phonics method.

Having read through this site which discusses myths about Whole Language Education, I clearly understand Dr. Ghate's points.

Perhaps Whole Language education should be banished from our schools.

[DavidOdden]

Perhaps Whole Language education should be banished from our schools.

That wasn't the largest load of educationalese I've seen, but it was just enough to remind me why "education" as an academic discipline should be outlawed as a fundamental violation of human rights. I was quite impressed at their ability to provide no information, and use a lot a words to do so. Their defense of Whole Language Education goes like this: "There is a myth that Whole Language Teachers don't teach skills. That's not true. [No evidence given]". And then they procede to explain why Whole Language Teachers reject the myth that teaching skills is important. They seem to do nothing but reject myths.

Public education ought to be banished. The problem is, how can parents keep up with the crap that they teach in school? They are entrusting their children's future to trained professionals, right?

[Tom Rexton]

Wow, this is just sickening.

How widespread is "Whole Language" teaching in the US public schools? Thank God (metaphor!) I was taught with traditional phonics.

[brakthepoet]

When doing my student teaching in, I commented to the classroom teacher on the significant difference between the language skills of the 10th and 11th grade students. The difference was way larger than could be accounted for by age difference or a year of school.

The teacher responded that the 10th grade students entered kindergarten when the whole language craze started. The school was in a town near a university, so all the new teaching fads are tried there. They were the first class to experience the genius of whole language education throughout their school years. The results of that teaching were less than stellar.

It really is as bad as it looks. But, hey, who cares as long as it puts on a good show and gets some bureaucrat a promotion, right?

[Evangelical Capitalist]

"Whole Language" education seems to consist of learning without teaching, and of using skills that haven't been learned. It consists, in other words, of A being non-A and the reversal of cause and effect.

[Oakes]

The teacher responded that the 10th grade students entered kindergarten when the whole language craze started. The school was in a town near a university, so all the new teaching fads are tried there. They were the first class to experience the genius of whole language education throughout their school years. The results of that teaching were less than stellar.

How long ago was this? I ask because I've been going to school in a college town (Penn State University) since third grade. I have no idea which philosophy was most used in that time, but I have an inkling it has been Whole Language.

PS. MY 100TH POST!!!

[Ursus]

At some of the schools around where I live in Illinois they have "experimented" with this method. One of the children of someone I work with was selected for one of the test classes which selected students on the criteria of being typical children their age.

After the year was up he could barely read. The woman I work with said her kid understands maybe every third word in a sentance and is practically illiterate. Most of the parents complained of similar or worse problems, apparently more than a third of the children who went through the "Whole Language Education" now require special remedial attention, but that didn't stop them from adopting the program school-wide the next year.

I guess the teachers were satisfied with the results...

[softwareNerd]

It appears that phonics has pretty much won the day. Even those who do not like phonics philosophically, seem allow that it can be part of the "mix" with other whole-word stuff because it works. A quick survey of a few public school district curricula shows that phonics is explicitly a part of most reading programs. The company that sells "Hooked on Phonics" claims to have sold 2 million copies. PBS reading programs like "Between the Lions" is largely (if not completely) phonics-based. Phonics are probably going to be part of the curriculum in British government-funded schools.

More broadly, I've seen a lot of ancedotal evidence that suggests that people are more open to the proposition that early education, including early reading, matters.

Over all, the trends are in the right direction.

[Hal]

I know nothing about education or developmental psychology, however:

In pure synthetic phonics, children start by learning the sounds of letters and of letter combinations: "ss-t-rrr-ee-t".

Only once they have learnt all these do they progress to reading books.

This seems wrong, and it conflicts with my intuitions, which are admittedly based on nothing. However, I would have thought that although teaching phonics is important, it should be combined with more holistic methods - ie there should be a mixture of both, where children are taught individual sounds, while also gaining familiarity with words as whole units. My reasoning for this stems from that fact that I've found as an adult that most things are best learned via a combination of reductionist and holistic approaches, rather than focusing exclusively on one or the other (two examples: Maths and Go). Is there any actual research which suggests sticking exclusively to one method is best for teaching reading? I would have thought most children would get bored senseless having to constantly drill letter sounds without actually geting to practice their reading (it would be like teaching someone how to play chess by getting him to solve hundreds of isolated chess problems, rather than playing any full games. Or teaching someone to play the guitar by repeatedly going over individual chords, rather than trying to play full songs).

edit

Critics say it might teach children to read - but not necessarily to understand what they are reading.

Thats actually one of the worst arguments I've heard for weeks Edited March 20, 2006 by Hal

[Felix]

What does this "Whole Language Education" actually consist of? The link didn't really provide anything of substance.

I also don't know this phonics theory. Is it only used to teach reading or also to teach writing? Because I doubt that it's useful for the latter.

Anyway, I would have given it another name. If what Hal said is true, according to phonics it is pronounced: p-honics.

Not a very smart way to start.

Edited March 20, 2006 by Felix

[IAmMetaphysical]

Or teaching someone to play the guitar by repeatedly going over individual chords, rather than trying to play full songs).

I play guitar, and I taught myself. I learned how to play songs, and that was the fun part. But I couldn't play the songs without first learning the chords, and which strings were which, and what they were named, etc.

The fact of the matter is that phonics works practically because it works in theory. Words are concretes for concepts, so that we can retain the concept for ourselves using a symbol. But words are themselves often made up of smaller symbols and smaller concretes, e.g. prefixes and suffixes. But, syllables themselves can be thought of as their own concretes, they are the basic building blocks of verbal speech, and as such they need their own symbols in written language. This is where sounding out the word using the syllable symbols comes into play. How do you think children first learn to understand speech? By picking out individual words? No, they learn it by isolating the differing syllable sounds first, then they group those sounds together as words. They learn to separate sh from ch from fff from ta and so forth. Then when they have those separated perceptually, then can then start to integrate them into words.

The written language is a different language than the oral language, even if they are both "english" or whatever, because they use different symbols (albeit they arouse the same aural perceptions). This symbolic language must be learned first, and it is much easier to memorize the symbols for say 60 syllabic sounds than it is to learn 5,000 words wholly. (This is why I can't understand how the Chinese haven't refined their system)

I really have no idea why phonics was abandoned (its not like it doesn't work) and I don't know why this whole language crap is held on to so dearly.

[intellectualammo]

What does this "Whole Language Education" actually consist of? The link didn't really provide anything of substance. I also don't know this phonics theory. Is it only used to teach reading or also to teach writing? Because I doubt that it's useful for the latter.

"Whole Language Education"...I asume that that is using the "Whole Word method" or "Look-Say" approach, in which whole words are memerized instead of learning the individual sounds of consonants, vowels, various combinations of letters, and so forth. This method "Whole Word" "Look-Say" I am absolutely opposed to. This is an anti-conceptual approach, a perceptual approach to reading/writing...the method used by the "comprachico's of the mind".

"Why Johnny Can't Think" by Leonard Peikoff (can be found in TVoR)

"The Comprachicos" by Ayn Rand (New Left)

Also try looking at a Montessori based education.

Like the VanDamme Academy.

[MightierPen]

Luckily for me I learned to read with phonics before I entered Kindergarden (and got in trouble for being able to read while others couldn't; apparently it's not fair ).

I never noticed it at the time, but the school used a whole-language approach. What they would do is give everybody a story and then read it aloud. After time they would get kids into small groups and get them to basically recite the story. And to this day I am far ahead of most of my pears in terms of reading skill and comprehension. I even have a very intelligent friend that can barely read because he was brought up on whole-language. It's sad.

[softwareNerd]

I'm not an educator. This comes from experience with my son, now seven.

I would have thought most children would get bored senseless having to constantly drill letter sounds...

It would be terribly boring to practice sounds without any purpose. As an adult, the best way to visualize the process is to imagine something written in a completely alien script. The kid does have a purpose: to cipher this coded message. It is extremely empowering when he learns to do so.

At the very beginning, reading is not about sentences, but about simple words. Kids starting to read will typically begin with A,B,C books. "A" and a picture of an Apple. "B" and a picture of a ball. [Aside: Since vowels can have different sounds, one has to know which one to treat as the standard sound. So, one might not introduce the word "Ark" until later.]

Next, kids move on to books with words like "CAT", "BAT", and so on. When they come to these words, it is easy for them to learn them if they already have some memory of the sounds made by the consonants and vowels.

One does not have to keep kids away from some books, as being too advanced. They may be more than ready for the vocabulary in some books, though they are not yet ready to read them. So, kids love picture books: monkey, elephant, and so on. If they can remember how to read some of those words, well and good. If not, that's fine -- that's not the purpose. Reading is a separate exercise. Similarly, stories are a separate type of learning. At a certain age, kids move on from wanting to point to discrete pictures and learn what the word is. Instead they want to hear simple stories. This, again, is quite separate from "reading". There is a certain age when a kid will be able to pick up his story book and "read" you the story, but all the sentences are actually from memory; they aren't really reading. If you show them those words outside the context of the story, they will often not know what they are.

So, in essence, there is vocabulary and stories. There can also be whole-word memorization as a stop-gap to let the kid read something if one really must (and because one does not design the reading material, but work with the best available). And then, separately, is the process of learning to read formally and in a way that makes most undiscovered words readable.

So, a kid might encounter the word "STREET" and might memorize it. However, formally, a word like "Street" is quite elaborate, because it has the "ST" and it also has the "EE". The kid who is being taught formally to read "street" should already have formally been taught the use of those two (e.g. "STOP" and "FEET"). So, one takes the child from "this symbol says street" to the realization "oh! this is why this symbol says street".

[On a separate, but related, note: Montessori recommends teaching writing before reading, saying the the child is ready to write before he can read. I did not find this to be true with my son. ]

[Eternal]

As an adult, the best way to visualize the process is to imagine something written in a completely alien script.

Take Chinese for example...

Anyway - where I grew up, we didn't have problems like this, as my first language is extremely phonetic. Because of that, once you knew the sounds of individual letters, you could correctly read any combination, so that was the way we were taught in schools.

There are just too many exceptions in English - and when I first started learning it, as a foreign language, I was finding it extremely frustrating. For example: door vs moon or blade vs. bladder. (although I did eventually figure out the rule behind the latter anomaly).

Not to mention the fact, that you guys have a tendency to write like ten letters, only to end up reading one or two. For example: thought, through.

But the relative simplicity of grammar, makes up for all the other shortcommings of English, and it's a language that just sounds 'cool', especially to my Slavic ears.

Edited March 21, 2006 by Eternal

[IAmMetaphysical]

Just a question Eternal (I've always wondered this) You said english sounds "cool". What does it sound like? Does it sound like german (since it is closely related and the ends of words can sometimes be "harsh") Does it sound poetic (lingual) like the romance languages? Guttural like the asian languages?

Edited March 21, 2006 by IAmMetaphysical

[Eternal]

Just a question Eternal (I've always wondered this) You said english sounds "cool". What does it sound like?

I think it all depends on what one's native language is. To me, German sounds ugly, and unpleasant mainly because of its harshness. English has a very natural, melodic flow to it - there are no sharp breaks. There are no annoying consonant sounds that stand out either (like Spanish "rrr"). It's all nicely blended.

I'd say English sounds somewhere between French and German. I enjoy listening to poetry being recited in English, but I just can't stand it in German.

There's probably a big cultural component to this as well. When you're growing up and 99% of your movie heros speak English (thanks Hollywood), you just have to associate English with 'cool'. And by the same token, anything sounding like 'Big Borther' Russian automatically gets classified as 'un-cool'.

By the way - one way you can try to approximate, how your language sounds to foreign speakers, is by making up meaningless English words, that are properly formed phonetically.

Edited March 21, 2006 by Eternal