The following message is a synthesis of xmca discussions on the
political use and polarization of educational issues, focusing on the
phonics/WL strand. Other extended exchanges since the Stone article
was posted, inlcuding responses to the Sokal controversy, though
related, are less well represented, only because the issues and my
interests broaden beyond my capacity to integrate them right now. Perhaps
the following may be of some small use in a more public response to
guttered educational discourse. However, despite the fineness,
judiciousness, & on occasion brilliance of the overall discussion
(in its original e-mail form), it amounts to a position statement of
sorts, not the sort of evidence-based argument that we have said
the debate needs, and I have no time to make this a project.
I've had a proposal deadline to meet and my attention is otherwise
devoted either to a dying father or to the effects on us witnesses
of witnessing this last phase of the last phase of a process we are all
undergoing. (Everyone I've felt affection for who has died
has shown me more of the way -- mimetic instruction, of which there's
more to say-- but still....)
-----
Recently, attacks against a wide range of approaches to education
have appeared on the Internet, in professional journals, and in the
news media. While the attacks vary from sloppily researched diatribe to
reasoned argument, they have in common a commitment to
certain forms of instruction that the OTHER approach
to education (the one under attack) supposedly neglects.
Although XMCA participants who have commented on these attacks
are educators of different persuasions, they have all objected
strongly to the dichotomization of educational issues and the sacrifice
of substantive debate to "empty symbol politics." In the interest
of working towards empirically sound & necessarily complex
representations of actual educational practices, and thus toward
decisions leading to BETTER practices, I offer this
partial summary of discussions re: politics, ideals, &
realities of education.
(I stuck pretty much to the gist not the text of discussions.
I trust that xmca-ers whose positions differ from what follows will
clarify/amend)
American education seems to vacillate between "half-truths" (Mosher, 5/10).
that take the form of EITHER a belief that students need explicit
instruction in basic skills (e.g., phonics instruction) OR the conviction
that students need lots of literacy experiences that are relevant to
their lives (e.g., "Whole Language" instruction). In fact, participants
on this list agree that good teachers find ways to do both. Intending to
expand the terms of the debate beyond the usual dichotomies, they have
argued for "simultaneously grasped perspectives" (Wells) and for
"pragmatic solution-oriented perspectives" (Raithel)
To be more specific, xmca-ers generally agree that schooling should
offer students both texts, problems, and projects that are relevant
to their lives AND instruction that focuses on those features of
literacy that may generalize across texts, problems, and projects
(subtasks and routines, such as recognizing grapheme and phoneme
correspondences). Of course the combination of instructional approaches
leaves a lot to be answered: When is it appropriate to focus attention on
discrete skills or facts? How much explication is enough, how much
is too much, and how does the teacher know? Rather than formulas,
xmca-ers advocate _navigation aids_ (JL?) for teachers,
philosophies informed by experience that can guide decision-making in
complex classroom environments, ways of linking general principles of
learning and development to on-line teaching and learning interactions...
At one (high) level of generality, such principles would include
the design of classroom environments rich in materials relevant to
students' lives and motivating activities [JL's "contexts and
functions for meanings"]; it would also include instruction focused on
forms and rules as resources for use in the future (JL's "transportable,
generalizable tools"). Another principle not yet discussed derives
from a leading assumption of the xmca community, that knowledge
"arises from activity and is oriented towards future activity." (Wells)
Thus, xmca-ers also advocate linking classroom work to the cultural
and historical practices that it supports - drawing attention to the
grammar of situations, as well as the grammar of sentences.
To focus on the ongoing history of knowledge-making
is to foreground contextual features, social relations and
values, making them available for analysis and critique.
In sum, the the xmca community recommends some combination of
whole language practices and explicit instruction, with a third term,
a concern for history and culture, added to the mix [A position
that needs only specificity and concrete examples to make it
interesting & useful. And the contentious issue of WHAT counts as history
and culture - of content - not addressed]
Even if opponents on either side of the debates in education were to
agree on an eclectic mix of pedagogical principles, they would still
be faced with questions about what those principles _ought_ to mean in
practice. In the debates over one form of instrucation or another,
we inevitably hear about the failures of a particular philosophy of
education to make public schooling work better or work for more students.
But the practical realities are that the models of educational practice we
construct get hooked in unpredictable ways to other practices (Winward).
"Translations" of a philosophy into educational practices can never be
more than approximations. The slippage between principles and practice
not only breeds questions (a potential benefit to the educational
project) but also (unfortunately) invites caricature of aims and
methods and makes fodder for our culture wars.
The only evidence-based discussion of specific issues that cuts
past general principles and resists stereotypification was based on a
dissertation study of math education, which (according to JL) found that
"insofar as teachers make accommodations to the dispositions of
their students from non-dominant groups.... they wind up not modelling
for them the most powerful discourses, registers, and genres of
mathematics." JL's discussion invokes a theory of discourse
(that mathematics talk like other dominant discourses functions
within a narrow, technical and authoritative register), and it
foregrounds concerns for the education of non-mainstream populations.
But the questions it raised can be cast in "neutral" terms, as a
problem all teachers must face (tho' granted, Bernstein makes clear
that questions of pacing are hardly neutral). These are issues that
interest me, so I will end by inviting discussion. Does a dominant
discourse lose its virtuosity when it signals a relational modality?
Jim Martin's claim - that it's the powerful discourse, not its
watered down version, that needs renovating - suggests so.
Here is a good example of the need for messy data, a good place
for me to stop.