Quotes are taken from a message written by Dan to Charles on
07/28/96...  
DT>I am supposing there are some legitimate concerns over various practices. 
DT>One that comes to mine is invented spelling.
Indeed, invented spelling is one of the concerns.  I'll keep this brief 
with just one quote. ;-)  This article was written by Phyllis Schlafly 
and it was posted at http://vision.accessus.net/~eagle/column/col-9-28.html
"Honig (Bill Honig is the former Commissioner of Education in 
California - CB) argues for teaching children to write and to spell 
accurately in the first grade, too.  "Inventive spelling" shouldn't be 
allowed past mid-first grade; children's misspellings should be 
corrected so erroneous patterns are not reinforced."
DT>Whole Language, as you know, is not a system but more a
DT>perspective  of reading instruction that is compatible with the
DT>psycholinguistic view of the reading process.
Again, I saw this posted in several of the articles I researched, but 
opponents argue that this is not the case.  From an article entitled 
"What is Whole Language" posted at 
http://www.theriver.com/public/yucs...rents_edu_forum/whole_language.html
"Advocates point to research done in linguistics and psycholinguistics 
to back their claims. Psycholinguistics is a relatively new branch of 
science which studies the psychology and physical development of oral 
language in young children. It does not deal in any direct way with 
reading acquisition."
And later in the same article...
"Essentially this letter (referring to the same letter mentioned in an 
earlier message written by 40 professors and doctors - CB) states that 
there is no scientific basis in linguistics or psycholinguistics to 
support a non-phonics whole language approach. It should be noted that 
one of the members of the MIT faculty who works with Dr. Pesetsky is 
none other than Noam Chomsky, considered to be the most influential 
thinker in psycholinguistics in this century.  His book on the subject, 
in 1957, caused tremendous new interest in the subject and has led to 
much recent research."
DT>You are probably right although I think there is a greater emphasis on 
DT>teaching phonics now than there was when WL first came on the scene.  I 
DT>think we have learned that the teaching of skills must be meaningful to 
DT>kids but skills are still important.
It is quite possible in your school, your district or even your county 
that phonics are being used in your whole language program, but that is 
not always the case.  To wit, the following comes from the article "What 
is Whole Language", noted above...
"The whole word method continued to gain favor during the 1920's. Much 
of this was due to books published by Dr. Arthur Gates of Columbia 
University. His book, "New Methods in Primary Reading", was filled with 
"research" that supposedly proved the superiority of the word method. 
Much of this research has since been found to be incorrect or based on 
improper research methods. Published in 1928, the book advocated the 
following reading strategies:
1. Try to recognize the general pattern, or configuration of the word.
2. Special characteristics of the appearance of the word 3. Similarity 
to known words 4. Recognition of familiar parts in longer words. 5. Use 
picture clues 6. Use context clues 7. Phonetic and structural analysis of 
words.
The strategies were listed in the order of their importance for new word 
recognition. Only rarely would a student arrive at number seven without 
believing they had found the secret word. The 1928 "strategies" are very 
similar to what is advocated by whole language experts today."
And the following comes from the article by Jill Stewart noted in the 
message previous to this one...
"Joseph, on the board of a non-profit training and policy group, the 
California Institute for School Improvement, began a month-long process 
of talking to educators to find out what was happening in the schools.  
"I got, almost without exception: "Oh my God, Marion, we are having a 
terrible time.  The new reading method is not working."  Teachers 
related tales to Joseph in which, "if they tried to teach phonics or 
word attack skills to the kids who weren't getting it from the storybook 
and the invented writings, bureaucrats came in from their district 
office and ordered a stop to it.  It was terrible stuff, virtually a new 
religion, a cult."
And still later in the Jill Stewart article...
"At Heliotrope Elementary School in Maywood, a Los Angeles suburb, 
teacher Patty Abarca became notorious for defying her school's ban on 
spelling tests and basal readers.  Her war began in the early 1990's 
when a now-departed vice principal, a hardcore whole language purist 
with little teaching experience, announced that teachers who were using 
traditional reading primers were "losers.""
(I have written for permission to post Jill's two part article in this 
forum as it is extremely well researched, presenting more balance than 
my quotes here project.)
(To be continued...)
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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