Why the anti-phonics nonsense?

An interesting email in response to this story from a reader below. It may be worth noting that the actual origin of the "Whole Language" instructional theory goes back to an observation first made in Wilhelm Wundt's psychological laboratory in Germany around a century ago -- the observation that adults recognize whole words in their reading. The marvellous resultant theory that children should be taught that way would soon have been knocked on the head by its poor results if schools had been run as for-profit companies who were paid by results. Being protected by governmment, however, schools had no incentive to abandon what did not work. They just carried on in their love of their theory -- which seemed "obvious" to them. It is a pity that the obvious (such as the flatness of the earth) is sometimes wrong. So the Whole Language people are essentially flat-earthers.

Why did Whole Language methods persist? Why did the phonics versus Whole Language dispute divide along political lines? I have four tentative partial explanations.

1) Drill, past the point at which the student "gets it", is boring. Worksheets can be crutches for lazy teachers. Drill beyond the point of boredom may provoke an allergic reaction in students. I see this as a reasonable consideration, but it should not have been decisive. I use worksheets and drill in math instruction.

2) To academic theorists, it is more important to be original than correct. Tried-and-true is uninteresting to Professors of Education.

3) Ineffective methods of instruction enhance employment in the education industry, which has no incentive to be efficient.

4) The publisher of a the popular Hooked On Phonics program, Regnery/Gateway, was also a publisher of numerous anti-Clinton titles, which other publishers refused. The US government sued Regnery/Gateway over Hooked on Phonics and so reduced their revenues from this product. I suspect that this was retaliation for their Clinton criticism. Professors of Education provided ammunition to their ally.

One day someone will write a history of the Whole Language fraud. Too bad no one will read it. Over the entire population, this deliberate lobotomization probably reduced overall longevity as much as a minor disease like pancreatic cancer. It probably reduces productivity over an afflicted worker's lifetime as much as all the illnesses for which s/he takes sick leave, put together.

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