Re: Agreed

KEN GOODMAN (kgoodman who-is-at CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU)
Mon, 13 May 1996 07:59:55 -0700 (MST)

Thanks to all and particularly Mike for the thoughtful responses to my
pleas. I want to raise two more issues. One is that it is the classroom
teachers and school administrators who are most under attack. Whole
language is more than anything else a grass roots movement. The attempt
by the far right to control teachers and teacher education through
legislative and administrative mandates is facing many teachers with
heavy pressures and hard choices- up to leaving their classrooms and
teaching. Sometimes single individuals in local schools and districts can
subject teachers and principals to incredible pressures with no
administrative support. These teachers need our help and our respect in
the courageous battles they are waging.

My second point: In many cases the political naivite of academics causes
them to become part of the problem. It's one thing for a group of
linguists to publically argue agains twhole language and meaning
construction in written language. It is quite another for them to go
directly to the Commissioner of education in Massachusettes to join a
battle being waged against the about to be adopted reading framework
including in their objections references to whole language as the
supposed reason for drops in test scores in California and asserting a
similar effect in Mass. matters for which they have no evidence or expertise.
It's one thing for experimental psychologists to argue for a word
recognition view of reading. Its quite another to turn their view into
mandated structures to be imposed on all primary teachers in California.
My final concern is that all of us apply the same rigor to how we frame
and stazte our views on schools, literacy education and teachers that we
do in our own disciplines while presenting our arguments to our peers.
Ken Goodman