Jay Lemke wrote:
> Important as the consequences may be of efforts to legislate particular
> methods of teaching reading, I was also struck by some larger issues as Ken
> and Ilda sketched the terrain over which the 'reading wars' are being fought.
>
> Ilda was at pains to remind Ken, as he himself has so often reminded all of
> us, that what matters is not the rules or principles that are said to
> define an approach to teaching (be it Whole Language, the various flavors
> of Phonics, or Hands-on Constructivist Science Teaching --- one that I
> contend with), but rather the total practice of teachers and students
> together. Most research which compares teacher beliefs and teacher practice
> finds not unexpected gaps. These are the product neither of ignorant
> inconsistency nor insufficiently diligent study and application of the
> rules. We have discussed the relations of the abstract and the concrete
> often enough here to recognize that no set of rules or principles can
> determine practice, that there is a vast amount of work needed just to
> imagine how any rule could apply to a specific situation, and no way to
> determine any unique application. Ken often says that Wh-Lang is a
> philosophy rather than a set of rules for practice; perhaps it is even
> something like a 'habitus', a system of acquired dispositions toward
> reacting more one way to an immediate event rather than other ways, and
> surely it cannot be articulated into any unique set of rules.
>
> Ilda said much the same about various flavors of Phonics ... that what
> teachers trained in these methods actually do with them is far subtler and
> more complex than the textbook principles might indicate. What we know
> about teachers' practices indicates that successful and experienced
> teachers tend to be 'eclectic and pragmatic' rather than method
> monoculturists guided by theory rather than by experience and results. So
> are we all in every complex human activity.
>
> Perhaps one of the key differences between Wh-Lang and Phonics, as we find
> in many arenas of intellectual practice, is the difference between weakly
> codified and strongly codified practices. Do we enunciate a general
> philosophy and rely on its interpretation in practice for specificity, or
> do we devise a system of very specific abstract rules, knowing full well
> that practice will inevitably deviate from them or need to go well beyond
> what they can define? Don't we see this same contrast between 'qualitative'
> and 'quantitative' research methodologies ... where the real difference is
> not whether numerical methods are used, but whether we believe that our
> methods should be highly rule-specified or highly context-dependent?
>
> And this is, I think, also the classic dilemma of the Law. Perhaps moreso
> even than social science research, and certainly for much longer, the field
> of Law has struggled with the impossibility of formulating abstract general
> rules that can cover all the real complexity of possible human situations.
> Serious students of law know that 'the law' is not just a set of codified
> legislation, nor even that plus a body of judicial decisions and opinions,
> it is a process of fitting in each case the body of written law to the
> facts of the particular case ... and it is a system of such practices,
> acquired by good lawyers and jurists, involving weakly codified principles
> of legal reasoning ... and a great deal of inarticulable 'habitus' (in
> which of course all the social caste and interest biases claimed have their
> effects too).
>
> This is certainly at least as much the case in the writing of laws as in
> their interpretation. A competently written law takes into account the
> likely process of administrative and judicial application of that law; it
> recognizes the doctrines (weakly codified norms of practice) that will be
> applied in the law's interpretation. This is one reason why one does need
> lawyers to draft good laws. It also provides a loophole for politicians,
> who know quite well that much of what they write into law for the sake of
> gaining a few votes from some particular narrow constituency will not do
> nearly as much damage to the commonweal in practice as it might seem likely
> to do on its face. Laws are extensively mediated by the total practice of
> the legal system. Progressive laws are often eviscerated by a system which
> interprets them with a more conservative bias; reactionary laws often come
> to little effect on a longer timescale of interpretation, administration,
> legal challenge, accumulation of precedent and doctrine ...
>
> Good laws do not micromanage human behavior because there cannot be in
> practice the level of surveillance, or the simplicity of interpretation of
> the law's application, needed to do so effectively. Even ordinary
> management requires an extensive consensus in the population, rarely
> achieved. 'Good laws' are those that have widespread practical effect over
> long periods of time, whether for good or ill in anyone's eyes. 'Bad laws'
> are bad jokes on the body public; they serve solely short-term symbolic
> functions, for they are not capable of doing more.
>
> Besides, respect for law as law is pretty well dead in urban America;
> proving that it was never in fact necessary to the continuation of civil
> society. Breaking bad laws with a good conscience is a healthy exercise of
> our sovereignty, and no one knows this better than the politicians who make
> such laws.
>
> JAY.
>
> ---------------------------
> JAY L. LEMKE
> PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
> CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
> JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
> <http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
> ---------------------------