WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.060 This is The Reading Instruction Show. I am your 00:00:03.060 --> 00:00:06.700 host, as always, Dr. Andy Johnson. The title 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:11.400 of today's podcast is From There to Here. It 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:16.859 also could be Forward to the Past. Let me explain. 00:00:17.879 --> 00:00:21.280 One of the first things I do every morning is 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:25.559 to engage in some form of academic reading. I 00:00:25.559 --> 00:00:29.679 read books and journal articles. and I reread 00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:32.079 the books and articles that I've read in the 00:00:32.079 --> 00:00:36.200 past. And when I do this, I highlight passages 00:00:36.200 --> 00:00:41.420 where I made marks in the margins. And with these 00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:44.740 already read books, I also read the notes that 00:00:44.740 --> 00:00:47.960 I wrote to myself in the margins and I often 00:00:47.960 --> 00:00:51.820 write new notes to myself. My future self will 00:00:51.820 --> 00:00:56.399 look back and see these. This process helps me 00:00:56.399 --> 00:01:00.969 understand what I thought was important at the 00:01:00.969 --> 00:01:04.709 time of the original reading. And it helps me 00:01:04.709 --> 00:01:09.609 remember some important points. And I find it 00:01:09.609 --> 00:01:13.409 extremely pleasurable, and it focuses my mind 00:01:13.409 --> 00:01:18.290 for the writing that I do every day. Now, I was 00:01:18.290 --> 00:01:21.390 re -reading Ken Goodman's On Reading. This is 00:01:21.390 --> 00:01:24.569 a great book, by the way. As are all of his books. 00:01:25.290 --> 00:01:30.569 He was talking about transactions between readers 00:01:30.569 --> 00:01:36.670 and text. And I realized that one of the reasons 00:01:36.670 --> 00:01:40.930 why so many people have been snookered by the 00:01:40.930 --> 00:01:46.170 incessant bleeding, bleating for structured literacy, 00:01:47.170 --> 00:01:50.450 as opposed to unstructured literacy or chaotic 00:01:50.450 --> 00:01:55.400 literacy or random literacy, One of the reasons 00:01:55.400 --> 00:01:58.780 why so many have been snookered and bleated at 00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:04.840 is because we, us in the meaning -based literacy, 00:02:05.140 --> 00:02:09.020 we've been writing and talking to ourselves. 00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:14.159 We write the things that we believe to people 00:02:14.159 --> 00:02:18.860 who believe the same sorts of things. And then 00:02:18.860 --> 00:02:21.860 we wonder why people who believe other things 00:02:21.860 --> 00:02:26.759 don't believe us. And there's a tendency for 00:02:26.759 --> 00:02:30.020 us to exclude those who believe other things. 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:34.960 These are the ones who believe us to be clowns. 00:02:35.319 --> 00:02:38.020 And a clown, by the way, is a person who thinks 00:02:38.020 --> 00:02:40.659 they know a lot, but in fact they know very little. 00:02:41.960 --> 00:02:45.360 And of course those who believe us to be clowns 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:49.699 are doing the same sorts of things to us. Send 00:02:49.699 --> 00:02:57.500 in the clowns. I used to be an avid letter writer. 00:02:57.659 --> 00:03:01.360 Get to the point, Dr. Clown. Okay, before email 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:05.400 I used to write a lot of letters to people, and 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:08.199 the people I wrote to most often were my Aunt 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:12.780 Emmy and Uncle Neil. My Aunt Emmy must have thought 00:03:12.780 --> 00:03:16.479 I had something to say or she liked my writing 00:03:16.479 --> 00:03:20.419 style, but she saved all my letters and sent 00:03:20.419 --> 00:03:24.939 them to me recently. As I read through them, 00:03:25.740 --> 00:03:29.060 I realized that I was wrestling with some deep 00:03:29.060 --> 00:03:32.340 issues back then, as well as describing some 00:03:32.340 --> 00:03:35.599 complex things based on the stuff I was reading. 00:03:36.919 --> 00:03:41.900 But also my writing style sounded nothing like 00:03:41.900 --> 00:03:45.000 my writing today. It sounded nothing like the 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.039 books in which these complex things I was reading 00:03:48.039 --> 00:03:52.840 about were found. I also realized that my writing 00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:57.120 was pretty gosh darn good. Illusions of grandeur 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:02.180 fully noted here. But I was writing to them. 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:07.780 I wasn't throwing out words and expecting invisible 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:12.400 people to figure them out. You didn't have to 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:17.600 read things twice to get my point. And I included 00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:22.959 myself, a real person, open for debate, in the 00:04:22.959 --> 00:04:27.180 writing. And I even threw in a joke here and 00:04:27.180 --> 00:04:33.639 there. Today, the kinds of books that I find 00:04:33.639 --> 00:04:38.459 fascinating are the same kinds of books that 00:04:38.459 --> 00:04:42.740 I had to force myself to read back when I was 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:47.339 an undergraduate student so many years ago. These 00:04:47.339 --> 00:04:53.860 books haven't changed a bit. But I have. Those 00:04:53.860 --> 00:04:56.740 books were written to people like the current 00:04:56.740 --> 00:05:02.060 me, with heads full of knowledge and a deep passion 00:05:02.060 --> 00:05:08.600 for things the authors were writing about. They 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:11.639 weren't writing to a college kid who just wanted 00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:16.060 to go out and drink a lot of beer. Writing to 00:05:16.060 --> 00:05:20.889 you. Again, do you have a point here? Yes. One 00:05:20.889 --> 00:05:24.009 of the reasons why people don't hear our very 00:05:24.009 --> 00:05:27.550 reasonable voices and aren't attending to our 00:05:27.550 --> 00:05:32.009 very reasonable arguments is that we're writing 00:05:32.009 --> 00:05:36.930 to each other. And we're using the same kind 00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:40.970 of writing we use to write to invisible people 00:05:40.970 --> 00:05:45.350 who will review our work to make decisions about 00:05:45.350 --> 00:05:49.029 accepting our articles or offering us book contracts. 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:54.079 We use a writing style that sounds very different 00:05:54.079 --> 00:05:57.620 from the language that comes out of our mouths. 00:05:58.819 --> 00:06:01.339 And I'm hoping those authors don't sound like 00:06:01.339 --> 00:06:06.379 that in real life. In this style of writing, 00:06:07.699 --> 00:06:11.279 the writer disappears behind objective pronouns 00:06:11.279 --> 00:06:15.160 and second or third person language. The first 00:06:15.160 --> 00:06:18.870 person, the writing person who's writing doesn't 00:06:18.870 --> 00:06:25.370 exist. Now, of course, I want everybody in the 00:06:25.370 --> 00:06:29.649 world to read the book I'm working on. But who 00:06:29.649 --> 00:06:33.649 I really want to read this book are two people. 00:06:34.189 --> 00:06:37.990 First, those who don't quite know what to believe, 00:06:39.370 --> 00:06:45.009 and second, those who think me to be a clown. 00:06:45.930 --> 00:06:51.339 I'm writing to you. but in so doing I'm not writing 00:06:51.339 --> 00:06:56.920 down to you, I'm writing over to you. I understand 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:00.759 that I'm over here with my knowledge and set 00:07:00.759 --> 00:07:05.000 of beliefs and you're over there with different 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:08.500 knowledge and a different set of beliefs or perhaps 00:07:08.500 --> 00:07:12.839 a little knowledge and a set of forming beliefs. 00:07:14.050 --> 00:07:17.430 My ultimate goal, and I admit this upfront, is 00:07:17.430 --> 00:07:21.370 to move you a little closer from there to here. 00:07:22.470 --> 00:07:25.350 That is, I want you to have some of the beliefs 00:07:25.350 --> 00:07:30.610 that I have about reading instruction. I believe 00:07:30.610 --> 00:07:34.750 that the utter clownery that is the science of 00:07:34.750 --> 00:07:38.490 reading and structured literacy will go away 00:07:38.490 --> 00:07:42.110 if you just have a bit of the knowledge that's 00:07:42.110 --> 00:07:46.189 in my head. It's impossible to think things with 00:07:46.189 --> 00:07:51.209 the knowledge in my head. One of the reasons 00:07:51.209 --> 00:07:54.410 why the science of reading people have been so 00:07:54.410 --> 00:07:58.170 successful is that they've been writing to the 00:07:58.170 --> 00:08:02.889 people over there. They've used stories in radio 00:08:02.889 --> 00:08:06.430 documentaries that sound very much like the way 00:08:06.430 --> 00:08:10.209 people talk. They've enabled the people over 00:08:10.209 --> 00:08:15.180 there to see and hear real people while our quiet, 00:08:15.560 --> 00:08:20.120 very reasoned, third -person voice has been ignored. 00:08:21.740 --> 00:08:26.319 So here's my letter. Dear Emmy and Neil, this 00:08:26.319 --> 00:08:30.000 is all nonsense. It really is. It's like a bad 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.179 movie. It's like Back to the Future, except it's 00:08:33.179 --> 00:08:36.840 forward to the past. The same sorts of Back to 00:08:36.840 --> 00:08:39.299 the Basics movement has happened in the past, 00:08:39.320 --> 00:08:43.929 but this time it's much worse. It's like I woke 00:08:43.929 --> 00:08:48.649 up and my worst nightmares have come true. The 00:08:48.649 --> 00:08:53.789 government is banning books. Professors are forced 00:08:53.789 --> 00:08:57.950 to teach things that aren't true. Teachers are 00:08:57.950 --> 00:09:03.070 told what to teach and how to teach it. And schools 00:09:03.070 --> 00:09:08.629 can only use approved reading programs. And worst, 00:09:08.990 --> 00:09:13.250 children don't read, write, and think. they respond 00:09:13.250 --> 00:09:18.450 to letters. Now I know this kind of thing has 00:09:18.450 --> 00:09:21.929 happened before to a lesser degree. Things like 00:09:21.929 --> 00:09:25.149 the Reading First initiative that was part of 00:09:25.149 --> 00:09:28.710 No Child Left Behind, these things have come 00:09:28.710 --> 00:09:32.629 and then disappeared as they proved to be useless 00:09:32.629 --> 00:09:37.750 and expensive. But it feels different this time. 00:09:38.830 --> 00:09:42.950 And can we afford to lose a generation of kids 00:09:42.950 --> 00:09:48.669 while this boondoggle plays out once again? Your 00:09:48.669 --> 00:09:50.330 nephew, Andy.