Welcome to another exciting adventure of the Reading Instruction Show. I am your
host, Dr. Andy Johnson. Title of today's podcast is called Forward to the Past with
Basils. Now, in the 1980, basils were the main tool used for teaching reading and
they still are today. Now, for those of you outside of education, a basal is a
teaching manual for reading. It includes an anthology of stories for students to
read, a teacher's manual with directions for how to teach reading and
consumable workbooks to use to teach reading subskills. Now, there are things
in these anthologies that some people call stories, but calling them stories is
a bit charitable. They're usually mush designed not to engage readers, but to
avoid offending anybody or causing any political waves. They are tasteless mush,
white bread without butter, watery oatmeal, Lutheran coffee so weak you can see the
bottom of the cup. The publishers of basils want their products to be adopted
by large states you see, some with very conservative agendas. There are state
legislators and other decision makers in these states who tend to take umbrage at
anything that doesn't reflect their worldview. Their squeamishly narrow point
of view about life and about reading instruction affects what they see. They
think that reading is just a bunch of sounding out words and since they
graduated first grade they also consider themselves to be experts on the subject
of reading. I mention this because the publishers of basils want to enhance
their profits. That's why they use mush for stories and include a whole lot of
sounding out word stuff in their packages. They want them adopted by these
states so of course they're not going to offend anybody and they're going to put
in them what they think people want to hear. Now they're called basils because
at one time they were thought to provide a base or a foundation for reading and
they were used in the early grades, but today they're used for grades one that
six and that name is not very accurate. So instead of basils we will call them
what they are commercial reading programs or CRPs. That's a much more accurate
indicator of what they are. Now CRPs are not designed to maximize students
literacy potential rather they are designed to maximize profits. Now I'm
about to tell you a well-guarded super secret thing that you are not to share
with anybody. This secret has been buried deep within Area 51 for years and was
only recently smuggled out by space aliens and this is the secret. The
ultimate goal of the educational industrial complex is not to help students
develop their full literacy potential or to improve society or to enhance
democracy. Publishing companies don't really care about what research might
say is best practice. Sure they put up a good front but they don't much care
about what's best for the students in your classroom or your kids. Their
bottom line is the bottom line. It's to generate profit not create literate
human beings. Now there's nothing wrong with profit absolutely not. I'm not
calling for the dismantling of capitalism or the downfall of the free
market system. There's nothing wrong with profit as long as it doesn't come at
the expense of somebody or something else but too often in education world
that occurs especially when the educational industrial complex is
involved. It's very difficult to be for profit and for people at the same time.
It's hard to serve two masters. Thus the profits of the educational industrial
complex often come at the expense of children, schools, school districts and
ultimately society. And don't be fooled by the testimony of famous people on the
inside cover of these CRPs. The CRPs pay them handsomely to have an opinion and to
have a specific opinion. Imagine that. And I'm talking about hard court trophies,
Houghton Mifflin reading, Macmillan McGraw Hill, Open Court, Scott
Forsman, Big Money, Ka-ching, money being made at the expense of our children. So
let's take a trip back to the future or future to the past. When I started
teaching second grade in River Falls, Wisconsin in August of 1983, I certainly
didn't have any real understanding of reading instruction or the reading
process. I had had one reading methods course in my teacher education program.
Today they got maybe two but that's it. Back then my total knowledge related to
reading instruction consisted of the knowledge that was in the assigned
textbook, much of which I didn't understand at the time and the things
that the professor told me, much of which was ununderstandable. So like many
teachers of the day, I just opened up the commercial reading program and followed
the directions. I did whatever they told me to do because the CRPs were scripted.
Everything you are supposed to say to your students was written in bold face
print. Good morning boys and girls. Today we are going to look at the short A-Style.
Easy peasy putting in pie. How could anyone fail to teach reading? You just
read the directions and this by the way is exactly what the science of reading
and publishing companies are pushing today. Just open the package and follow
the directions with fidelity. Don't think they tell teachers. We'll have none of
that thinking stuff around here. Just shut up and follow directions. Now back in
1983 these stories like today were basically mush and nobody likes to read
mush and many of the skills and the workbooks back in 1983 just like today
had little to do with helping students to read or to learn to read. There were
just a bunch of reading sub skills that somebody determined to be important. But
who was it and how did they come up with these skills? Well here's exactly how
they came up with the skills to include in these basals, these commercial
reading programs. The designers tried to take the complex act of reading and
break it down into a bunch of teeny tiny little parts. This breakdown and
analysis of the complex act of reading makes sense to an adult mind. That's
because adults have the big picture. We know where everything fits in and more
importantly adults have lots of knowledge and experience and the ability to
analyze things using advanced cognitive operations. We know where the teeny tiny
puzzle bits fit into the larger puzzle. We've seen the cover. We know what the
picture looks like so of course it makes sense to us. But young children have very
little knowledge of reading and very little experience and they are just
beginning to use very rudimentary forms of cognitive operations. But what do we
do? We give them a little teeny tiny piece of the puzzle one at a time and it
makes little sense. These reading subscales, these teeny tiny puzzle pieces,
they have no idea how it fits into the larger puzzle. They don't even know what
the puzzle is. The very important but not really little puzzle piece makes no sense
to them outside the context of the whole. But in 1983 as today it was assumed
that if you put these little teeny tiny reading subscales little parts back
together again you'd get a skilled reader at the end. Just like putting Humpty
Dumpty back together again and that's why we call it a Humpty Dumpty an
approach to reading instruction. And this is exactly what Emily Hanford,
Louisa Mott's state legislators in Minnesota, Wisconsin and other states
and the science of reading clown club think we should do. They want us to put
Humpty Dumpty together again one teeny tiny little reading subscale at a
time. And the I think is here is that at the end readers will be able to use all
these teeny tiny little parts to create meaning with print. They think without
any supporting research that all these teeny tiny little reading subscales will
naturally transfer to authentic reading situations. And of course all this Humpty
Dumpty and nonsense is based on a theory a series of I think isms, personal
anecdotes, I think isms. Now back in 1983 the basic CRP reading class went
something like this. You gave students seat work while you called a small group
of students, other students, to the kidney shape table at the front of the room
for reading instruction. Seat work, work done at your seat and it usually
consisted of workbook pages or some other type of lame work not designed to
teach reading but to keep students busy at their seats so you could quote teach
unquote hence the name seat work not reading work but seat work. And you
didn't really teach you just read the directions and followed the scripted
dialogue in the CRP and then you just told students to sound it out when they
got stuck on a word during round robin reading. Sound it out, you'd say. Sound it
out. That was my advanced pedagogical strategy for reading back in 1983 and
I'm not too dissimilar from most teachers. My reading instruction was not
dissimilar to many classes of the time. When students were done with their all
important seat work which really wasn't all that important they could find a
good book to read. Little did I know back then that finding a good book to
read should be the main work of a good reading class. Now there was usually a
three-day cycle. Day one I'd introduce the vocabulary words then we'd do round
robin reading with a new story and then I teach a skill do a workbook page and
send them back to their desk to do another really important but not really
workbook page. On day two we'd silently reread the same story. I teach another
skill and then send them back to their seats to do another really important but
not really workbook page. On day three we do some other lame skills work that had
nothing to do with real reading. I teach the lame skill that had nothing to do
with real reading and send them back to do yet another really important but not
really workbook page. I'd go to the next story rinse and repeat and repeat and
repeat. The problem was that with all these really important but not really
workbook pages students had no time to practice reading good books. How do you
get better at anything if you don't practice? We did far more workbook pages
in 1983 than actual reading. That's what they want today. Now looking back it
seems that some students learn to read not because of our teaching but in spite
of our teaching. Now good reading instruction in 1983 was good direction
following because the basal had everything laid out for teachers. After
all the basals were put together by reading experts. Who was I? A little
teacher to question them. These reading gods up high. Even if a skill or
worksheet seemed totally lame or useless and not at all something that would
benefit our students. Our job was to implement what the writers of the basals
told us to implement and in the way they wanted us to implement them. Within the
CRP stories and skills were grouped into things called units. There was a test at
the end of every unit to test students on the really important but not really
skills from their workbook pages. And in 1983 good reading was good unit test
taking. Good reading instruction was good unit test passing. It didn't really
matter how effective a student was at creating meaning with print or how much
reading that kid did outside a class. If the student could successfully complete
the end of unit test by Gully that kid was a good reader and by Gully I was a
good reading teacher. That was gosh darn good literacy instruction for many
teachers back in 1983 except it wasn't good at all. Looking back now I know that
I failed a lot of students because I didn't have me as a literacy professor
and I didn't have my books to read and it would be another 40 years before my
podcast became a thing. So two questions to ask. First did students enjoy reading
class back then? Reading is supposed to be enjoyable and interesting that's why
we do it but did they enjoy it? Were they interested? Did they look forward to
coming to class every day? And I have to say hell no not really. Who gets
excited about the schwa sound or dip thongs or stories about net and dead on
a bed that was red? Yay! They say I get to go to reading class and do worksheets
and read mush out loud. I can't wait. And second did I enjoy teaching reading? And
again hell no. It was boring. It was lifeless. It was dull. Nothing fun or
creative about it. I just opened the manual and did whatever was in the CRP
boring as hell. So students didn't really like reading class and I didn't
really like teaching reading class. We were creating a whole bunch of not
liking but instead we could have been reading and celebrating good books and
learning skills in the context of good books and writing stories and sharing
stories. We could have actually been learning how to read and to be and
become literate. What a waste. But forward to the past this is exactly what the
science of reading clown club is advocating today. They want us to go
back in time to adopt what wasn't very effective in the 80s and bring it back
with a vengeance to 2023 and 2024 back to the future. Hey Doc Brown can you help
me find a flux capacitor? Now whole language. In the late 80s I began to
hear about a different type of reading instruction called whole language.
Now I realize the instant reflective reaction that some have when they hear
whole language. The reaction is debunked. They proudly
exclaim as they march around the room with high knees. It's a reflexive
reaction for some especially within the science of reading clown club.
Vygotsky would call this a lower mental function. These include sucking, grasping,
attention, involuntary behaviors, elementary perception and debunking
things. Debunked. It's been debunked. It's debunked. Movement from lower to higher
mental functions occurs through language, culture and social interaction. So one
has to ask what is it that keeps clowns using this lower level reflexive mental
function instead of moving toward the higher mental functions such as logic
and planning, decision-making and other advanced cognitive operations. And the
answer is simple. They're not exposed to a great deal of culture or social
interaction related to reading instruction. They're stuck at this lower level
reflexive mental function because they reject reason and research and they
won't listen to any idea that may contradict their own. So the science of
reading clown club ends up living in echoing silo screaming debunked debunked
debunked debunked debunked debunked debunked debunked debunked debunked. Every time they encounter certain words that don't fit in their restrictive reading
paradigm. Now, let me be honest. When I first heard about whole language, I had no
idea what they were talking about. Couldn't wrap my head around it. It made no
sense. How was it possible to teach reading without worksheets? And how could
you teach anything without a teacher's manual? What do you do for 60 minutes if
you don't have a teacher's manual to tell you what to do? And how do you know
what to say to students? And how do you know if children are learning without
end-of-unit tests? And how could students possibly learn if they were enjoying
themselves? They shouldn't enjoy themselves. And how was it possible to
learn to read if students weren't reading Marsh designed to reinforce teeny
tiny reading subskills? Those all-important scub skills which really
aren't. And won't all that reading good books stuff and talking about books and
writing their own stories and sharing their own stories, won't that get in the
way of learning to read and write? And who is going to tell children to sound it
out when they come to a word they don't recognize? Students shouldn't talk to
each other. Are you crazy? They have to be quiet. That's how learning happens. They
have to sit quietly and absorb all the words that come out my mouth. That's how
it works you see. My vocal cords they vibrate and produce a sound. The sound
waves float through the air magically and vibrate the eardrums of students and
go on to carry electrical signals to their brains that are converted to words
and the words are converted to sentences and ideas and learning takes place.
That's how it happens. Don't you know? None of this talking and reading and
writing and thinking and enjoying. Learning should not be enjoyable or
conversational. It should be quiet drudgery. Damn it! Students should not talk to
each other. They should not be able to choose what to read and they should not
be able to read enjoyable books and any oral reading mistakes should be
corrected instantly with a loud sharp voice. That's the way God intended it
to be. However, just because you don't know about something or don't understand
something doesn't mean that something is bad. It just means you don't know or
understand. Hence whole language. Today the science of reading people, state
legislators and clowns consider whole language to be something horrible. But
they don't know what that horrible thing is. But I'll tell you what is horrible
is coming to conclusions on things with absolutely no knowledge of what that
horrible thing is. And that's not science and it certainly isn't reading science.
It's witch doctorry. But to give you just a little perspective on whole
language and commercial reading programs at the height of whole language in the
90s, commercial reading programs began including the words whole language on
the covers and in the descriptions of their products. Imagine that. Isn't that
hilarious? Slimey bastards for 600 Ken. The category is slimy bastards for 600 and
a chance to move ahead. This is on the cover and in the descriptions of CRPs
today. Oh, what is science of reading? That's right. This has been another
adventure of the reading instruction show. I'm your host, Dr. Andy Johnson. Our next
podcast, little examine reading workshop. Thank you.