I don't think that any part of the reading issue can be abstracted from the
political arena. Our system is not really set up to teach ALL children to
read and as we move farther away from a Democratic school system to the bottom
line driven system (testing) of a capitalistic nature I feel that we will not
only find opportunities for the non readers to participate but eventually we
will start telling ourselves that not being able to read is acceptable
(capitalists' hate to fail). Think for a moment if you would, what would
happen if all children could be taught to read by the regular classroom
teacher. Many jobs would be lost, (special ed. aides et). Much funding would
be eliminated (administrators and special interest groups would be unhappy,
federal dollars gone, textbook companies unhappy) and classroom teachers would
have to devote most of their day to teaching reading (many teachers don't like
to teach reading, don't read for enjoyment) there would not be enough time in
the day to do science, social studies music, art at least not outside of the
purpose of teaching reading unless the teacher were to take a holistic
approach.( a true whole language approach not the reading wars thing) Aha!
Just maybe this approach was really starting to work, all kids were learning
to read. Might that concept be too threatening? We are much more content with
having a test score, at least then we know there will be a group in need of
remediation and all those employed outside the regular Ed. classroom can
breath a sigh of relief their jobs are safe. ~~~Margaret, a reading teacher