It Is Written

Book and Teaching Material Reviews
Edited by Bern Mulvey

Beginning to Read and the Spin Doctors of Science: The Political Campaign to Change America's Mind about How Children Learn to Read. Denny Taylor. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. Pp. I-XXIV & 443. ISBN 0-8141-0275-1

Reviewed by Charles Jannuzi
Fukui University, Japan

As recent articles in many reading theory and literacy publications indicate, phonological and/or meta-phonological processes in reading alphabetic languages are being given considerable prominence. However, overall, the relative importance of this issue to literacy acquisition and reading for comprehension and learning is being blown far out of proportion. Perhaps because the issue lends itself well to experimental treatments and studies and theorizing, much is being published about the subject. Phonological and phonemic awareness, for example, are being forced into a reductionist, experimental framework that treats these metalinguistic skills as somehow causally underlying learning to read. This reductionist approach is now being used to justify a revival of explicit, direct instruction of phonics and other such "pre-reading" skills for beginning literacy in the English-speaking world.

This resurgence in the faith in code-and- skills-based instruction brings with it an attempt to renounce whole language (see Onore, 1999, for an account of what happened in one school when the staff divided over the issue). This trend so dismays Denny Taylor that she has expanded a project that was supposed to be a twenty- page critique of phonemic awareness studies into this rather large volume (see, though, Troia, 1999, for just such a critique). In addition to scholarly periodicals, much has appeared in the popular press concerning phonemic awareness and phonics. However, if you really want to understand more deeply just what the academic research and trends in instruction have to do with what is going on in education and politics, this book may well be the only book you will need to read.

Some academics might dismiss Taylor's book for its sometimes personal, opinionated, and subjective prose. Is she objective at all? My impression is she is quite objective and analytic when she has to be, and devastatingly analytic against phonological skills advocates or those who would treat phonics outside of a whole language approach in the classroom.

This book is a continuation of Taylor's innovative approach to writing for an audience that might include academics, but takes in classroom teachers, administrators, literacy volunteers, concerned parents, or anyone interested in the subject who finds the coverage in the popular press inadequate. Taylor has built a solid academic reputation on the basis of her ethnographic studies of family and community literacy, and has used this considerable research background to create such accessible, notable, award- winning works as Growing Up Literate, Learning Denied, and Toxic Literacies. Always striving for the accessibility and sense of style that seems to elude most writers in literacy and language education, she seems to revel in mixing genres in order to get her information and opinions across to a general audience.

Beginning to Read builds on Taylor's previous books for a general audience. It incorporates a selective review of the research (highly critical in its analysis), ethnography, personal correspondence, listserv e-mail exchanges, journalistic writing, interviews, narrative, and well-written personal reflections. Whether or not an academic reader or teacher agrees with her pro-whole language stance, most would have to concede that Taylor has successfully challenged, redefined, and thoroughly expanded the possibilities for writing for publication in literacy and language education.

From both psychological and sociocultural perspectives, Taylor mounts an airtight attack on much of the phonological/ phonemic awareness research. Her discussion is well worth quoting just as she has summarized it in her book:

1. Phonemic awareness experimentation rests on the assumption of cultural and social uniformity.

2. There are no children in the phonemic awareness studies, only labels, aggregates, and measures.

3. In phonemic awareness research, there is a complete separation of children's everyday worlds from their performance on certain isolated cognitive tasks.

4. In phonemic awareness research, the form of written language is separated from the meaningful interpretation of text.

5. Phonemic awareness research is based on the false assumption that children's early cognitive functions work from abstract exercises to meaningful activity.

6. In phonemic awareness research, the tests given to children provide measures which are of no value outside of the testing situation.

7. In phonemic awareness research, there is an underlying assumption that there will be a transfer from isolated exercises to reading texts.

8. The direct application of experimental research on phonemic awareness to classroom situations changes the relationships that exist between teachers and children. (pp. 89-90)

Also damning is the misuse of statistics in many of the empirical studies on phonological /phonemic awareness: "the manner in which the sample is drawn, the nature of the population from which the sample is drawn, and the kind of measurement or scaling which is employed to define the variables involved, all preclude the use of parametric statistical methods (p. 16, Taylor's emphasis)." Yet such parametric statistical methods pervade emprical research in literacy and language education.

Ultimately, the story of Beginning to Read is the story of Taylor attempting to find out who is behind the movement to use phonemic awareness research to justify ill-informed attempts to return to "basics" in how beginning literacy is taught. The political movement works hand-in-hand with the academic research, much of both originating in the states of Texas and California. These two states, not coincidentally, have large bilingual and ESL populations and are centers for the "English Only" movement. In politics, social trends, and education, where California and Texas go, much of the US is ready to follow. Both Republicans and Democrats want to be seen proposing and passing federal legislation to improve education and reading instruction, and often models for legislation come from populous, dynamic states such as California and Texas. One outspoken proponent of the phonemic awareness research and phonic skills approach is Governor Bush of Texas, a likely presidential candidate in 2000.

Taylor uses a controlling metaphor of the labyrinth. Setting out to write a brief paper, she is drawn ever deeper into a labyrinth of pseudo-scientific research supported and exploited by unscrupulous, opportunist politicians (both Democratic and Republican). The value of the research gets distorted in the mass media, which plays into the hands of the politicians. This in turn drives forces that engage in un-collegial attacks on academics--such as Ken Goodman, one of the founding figures of whole language--and run political campaigns to drive progressive, constructivist approaches to literacy out of America's schools. Whether or not there is a hegemonic complex of forces that will accomplish this is a matter of how national legislation actually gets interpreted and implemented at the state and local level. No matter what happens, I think most middle class people will still learn to read their native English. Bilinguals, immigrants, racial and cultural minorities, and the economic underclass are still not going to get fair treatment under programs for national educational reform--perhaps far worse treatment is coming. It is on this point that Taylor is most outraged. Still, Taylor is not paranoid nor is she hopelessly negative in her opposition. She gives the fullest account that I have read of what is happening in the "reading wars" in academia, in commercial publishing, in schools, and in the political arena. This book could well change the course of battle.

References

Onore, C. (1999). Whole language, whole school, whole community: Truths and consequences. English Education, 31, 150-168.

Troia, G.A. (1999). Phonological awareness intervention research: A critical review of the experimental methodology. Reading Research Quarterly, 34, 28-52.