Reading the Whole-Language Movement P. David Pearson The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 90, No. 2, Special Issue: Whole Language. (Nov., 1989), pp. 230-241. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28198911%2990%3A2%3C230%3ARTWM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I The Elementary School Journal is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucpress.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected].
http://www.jstor.org Fri Aug 24 09:09:52 2007
Commentary Reading the WholeLanguage Movement P. David Pearson University of lllinois
T ~ Elementary P school Journal Volume 90, Number 2
O 1989 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
oo1~-~~~~/~o/~ooz-oo1o~o1.oo
The year 1989 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my career as a professional educator. During those 25 years, I have witnessed m a n y movements, fads, a n d panaceas-the whole-word versus phonics debate, open education, mastery learning, outcomes-based education, learning- styles, neurological impress, the cognitive revolution, literature-based reading, to name but the most memorable. The reading field seems to have a special knack for attracting wide-scale reforms-one after another, after another, after another. But never have I witnessed anything like the rapid spread of the whole-language movement. Pick your metaphor-an epidemic, wildfire, manna from heaven-whole language has spread so rapidly throughout North America that it is a fact of life in literacy curriculum and research. Furthermore, it is, like the phonicsfirst movement in America, likely to remain a force that literacy researchers and curriculum developers will have to acknowledge for the foreseeable future. Unlike the openschool movement of the early 1970s, it is not likely to die at an early age. Whether it proves to be a catalyst for genuine, wide-scale reform in literacy research and practice depends largely on the political sensitivity of its leaders, people like those who have authored the articles in this issue. The most critical question is whether its leaders will be able to adapt their leadership style to the apparent success the movement is currently experiencing. It is one task to sponsor or support a set of scattered but dedicated guerrilla encounters; it is quite another
be a movement so popular and widespread that
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
it is in danger of becoming the conventional wisdom. This essay is more a response to the whole-language movement than a critique of the articles in this special issue. I admit the scope of my endeavor at the outset in order to set limitations on the completeness of my critique: in trying to characterize the entire movement, I will have to deal with it normatively, knowing full well that there is much variation between individuals within the movement on any particular issue I might raise. The principles of whole language that I discuss and critique in this essay come mainly from the authors and articles in this issue (with exceptions noted in citations). My primary goal is to try to characterize the movement in terms of its philosophical, political, and curricular assumptions and consequences. Whole language is much more than a way of teaching reading and writing. It has its own view of epistemology-how we come to know what we know. Compared to the conventional wisdom, it makes very different assumptions about who is in charge of schools and learning and teaching. And its intensely integrationist view of curriculum, if taken seriously, will influence everything taught in schools, not just reading and writing. I have three secondary goals. First, I want to praise the movement for the good it has done for students, teachers, and others involved in American education. There are many things I like about whole language; it has succeeded in accomplishing goals that many of us who are not part of the movement have failed to accomplish by using more conventional approaches to reform. Second, I want to point out some problematic features of the movement, at least as I see it being implemented; whether these problems are intrinsic to the approach or accidents of particular implementation attempts, I do not know. But they are problems, nonetheless, and deserve our attention. Finally, I want to evaluate its likely legacy; that is, 20 years from now, when we look back on the dec-
ade of the nineties and the whole-language movement, how will we regard its contribution to our evolving wisdom about the nature of literacy and literacy instruction?
The Nature of Whole Language The flavor of the whole-language movement-as a philosophical issue, as a political phenomenon, and as a curricular movement-is captured in its vocabulary. Just review the articles in this issue, and the key vocabulary literally jumps off the page at you. Whole-language advocates describe whole-language tasks and texts as functional, natural, genuine, authentic; they describe tasks and texts arising from the conventional wisdom (which seems to be any basal reader program accompanied, of course, by the obligatory standardized test) as disfunctional, unnatural, ingenuine, unauthentic, and contrived. In whole language, according to whole-language advocates, readers read to construct their own interpretation of texts written by authors whose genuine intent was to communicate with an audience for purposes of entertainment, information, or persuasion. In the conventional wisdom, according to whole-language advocates, readers read to regurgitate unrelated facts from texts written by hack writers whose purpose in writing them was to force students to practice unnecessary and fragmented reading skills in order to complete consumable workbooks. In whole language, they tell us, teachers work with students, the real curricular informants (Harste, Woodward, & Burke, 1984) in a collaborative milieu in order to plan and revise integrated curricular events that facilitate growth in each individual's emerging repertoire of literacy tools. They claim that teachers become aware of student progress by "kid watchingu-observing growth in students' repertoire of language activity while they complete authentic literacy tasks. In the conventional wisdom, they tell us, publishers and administrators control the game and call the shots; they pass on mandated materials and activities to teachers NOVEMBER 1989
COMMENTARY
who, in turn, foist them on students. And the whole enterprise, they claim, is monitored with a variety of piecemeal assessments of both student performance (usually tests) and teacher behavior (usually prescribed checklists of teacher behaviors known to be associated with effective teaching). The Curricular Perspective There are two key curricular concepts in whole language-integration and authenticity. And the commitment of the movement to these principles requires whole-language advocates to oppose the conventional curricula provided by basal reading programs. Integration. Integration is important in at least three senses. Whole-language curriculum is integrated in the sense that it seeks to preserve the wholeness or integrity of literacy events; no literacy act is mercilessly and unnecessarily decomposed into subskills. There is a necessary, natural, and desirable wholeness to both reading and writing, especially when students pursue each for genuine communicative purposes. Second, the curriculum is integrated in the sense that artificial boundaries are not set up between any two of the four language functions-reading, writing, speaking, and listening. All are regarded as supportive facets of the same underlying cognitive and linguistic phenomenon. All language acts are undertaken with genuine communicative intent; communication, in any one of its four realizations, helps individuals get what they want (i.e., satisfy primary or secondary human needs). Growth in any one of the functions supports growth in the others. Third, the curriculum is integrated in the sense that the literacy curriculum is not viewed as separate from social studies, science, literature, art, music, or mathematics curricula. In the spirit of the integrated-day curriculum of the British infant school tradition and, even earlier, the project approach of Kilpatrick (1918) so often associated with Dewey and Bentley's (1949) concept of progressive education (see Y. Goodman, 1989, in this issue, for a com-
233
plete discussion of the roots of the movement), whole language thrives on the principle that literacy tasks should never be ends unto themselves; instead, they should be means to other ends, such as learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and communication. Authenticity. Authenticity (for thorough treatments of a whole-language perspective on this issue, see Edelsky & Draper, 1989, and Edelsky & Harman, in press) is the second key curricular attribute of whole language. It is very much related to the second sense of integration; that is, when students pursue language activities out of genuine communicative intent, those activities will be authentic. Those who create basal readers and language arts textbooks get into trouble when they adopt either a readiness or a simulation perspective in developing activities. The readiness perspective suggests that real reading and writing are tough sledding; so educators must try to make life easier for their novice students. The best way to reduce complexity is to decompose reading and writing into simpler component subskills, each of which can be mastered in sequence, in order to get students ready for the real thing. So, according to the wholelanguage critique, students are always getting ready to do real reading and writing ("Just hang in there, guys; as soon as we get these sounds down, we'll be able to read real stories on our own") rather than doing real reading and writing in the first place. Whole-language advocates therefore support real reading and writing from the very outset of schooling. Nowhere is this support more evident than in the literature on what has been dubbed the emergent literacy movement (see Morrow & Smith, in press, or Teale & Sulzby, 1986, for complete treatments of issues in emergent literacy). The name, emergent literacy, is not accidental. Coined by Marie Clay (1966), the appellation has been popularized by those early literacy scholars who chose it in order to disassociate themselves from the formal readiness tradition and to capture the met-
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
aphor of literate acts "emerging" from the young child's wealth of experience and oral language development and natural desire to enter the rich and rewarding world of print. From a whole-language perspective, the simulation perspective is more subtle and, hence, more difficult to detect and eliminate. Worksheets on which students mark vowels or correct errors in grammar or spelling are clearly in the readiness tradition, and their inauthenticity is transparent and easy to detect. But what about an activity in which each of the first graders writes an invitation to the principal to visit the class to hear stories written by the children? Or how about grade 2 literature groups in which all of the students are reading a real book instead of one of those fake books perpetrated by basal publishers? Do those represent genuine, authentic literacy acts? Not really, at least according to some whole-language advocates. For example, Edelsky and Draper (1989) would call them simulations of real reading and writing rather than real reading and writing. In the invitation task, the students know perfectly well that only one invitation is necessary to accomplish the communicative goal. In the literature group task, the teacher controls the content and perhaps even the way the book gets discussed. I conjecture that whole-language advocates would attribute greater authenticity to a writing activity in which each student invited someone different (provided each wanted to invite someone) or Iiterature groups in which students got together on their own to discuss the different books that each had read. As near as I can tell, the whole-language criterion for authenticity is a "real-world" criterion; that is, a school task is regarded as authentic to the degree that it represents the kind of task literate individuals would exercise of their own free will (unfettered by an authority figure to control their behavior). The goal in whole-language curricula seems to be to eliminate the gap between school literacy tasks and real-world literacy tasks. Clearly a curriculum with this
dual commitment to integration and authenticity cannot tolerate the tightly prescribed bonds of a basal reading program with its concern for vocabulary control, preselected stories, sequenced skills, workbook activities (which are, at their very best, simulations), and tests written by some authority to monitor progress on each skill. The Philosophical Perspective Whole-language advocates accept, at a minimum, a constructivist view of knowledge and comprehension (e.g., Collins, Brown, & Larkin, 1980; Rosenblatt, 1978). There is no meaning in a text; there is no meaning for a text until readers construct it for themselves, and no two readers will construct identical meanings for a given text (see Barthes, 1964). Since meaning does not reside in the text, all comprehension is, by its very nature, a form of interpretation. Furthermore, since each reader must construct his or her own meaning, there can be no such thing as an authoritative interpretation. Each interpretation is, in this sense, every bit as valid as any other interpretation. What makes communication possible is shared, not identical, interpretations: we see things in common, but in our own idiosyncratic ways. This epistemological perspective carries important curricular and political implications. First, when it comes to comprehension, we are all-students, teachers, administrators, authors, critics-equals. A teacher's job is to understand, rather than correct, a student's interpretation because, as language users, understanding is our job in all communicative contexts. Second, an active interpretive community is necessary in order to support comprehension. What keeps us from idiosyncratic hallucination is that community with whom we negotiate meaning and share knowledge. Third, we must always remember that any situation involving either perception or comprehension will yield both personal and social meanings; both are to be respected. Fourth, all knowledge is only as good and stable as NOVEMBER 1989
COMMENTARY
235
the last time we used it. Knowledge requires constant updating and nourishment. This is true for teachers as well as students; a teacher's most significant professional obligation is to be a learner who is reflective (thoughtful about one's experience) and reflexive (always turning in on oneself to question personal assumptions about knowledge).
movement based on subjective epistemological principles and committed to bringing to schools all we know about how literacy functions in authentic situations. In fact, to eliminate the differences between literacy in schooling and literacy in life (at least, the good life) might be construed as a goal of the whole-language movement
The Political Perspective The primary political question for school curricula is, Who's in charge? For all too long, whole-language advocates tell us, we (where we means those of us who are teachers and students and live in classrooms) have given up our birthright; we have ceded the power to decide what will be learned and how it will be learned to them (where them means administrators, curriculum directors, curriculum committees, school boards, professors, publishers, or basal authors). It is time, they tell us, to empower teachers and students; it is time for curriculum to be returned to the communities of teachers and students who must live with it and give it life. A motto for whole-language curriculum might be this: All deci-
What I Like about Whole Language
sions should be made as closely as possible to the situation in which they will be implemented. If curriculum is returned to teachers and students, so too must assessment be. Were this to occur, then only "situated (i.e., arising from the situation) assessment, the kind that teachers and students would develop to suit their own curriculum, would count. Standardized tests and basal reading tests would serve no purpose in the curriculum, for neither would provide any information about real reading. Furthermore, the goal of every teacher assessment, even when it is situated, would be to promote student selfassessment. This focus on sharing authority with students and promoting student independence underscores an attribute of whole language commonly cited by its advocates; they like to call it child centered. So there is my characterization of whole language-a grass-roots curriculum reform
As I indicated at the outset, I find much to commend in the whole-language movement. In particular, its emphases on authenticity and integration and its assumptions about the nature of learning provide us all, in this time of testing turmoil and mandated accountability, with a breath of fresh air. Furthermore, many of its criticisms of the conventional wisdom-what we have done with basals and tests-are deserved. In our quest for accountability and efficiency in the 1970s and 1980s, we compromised many principles of learning, literature, and child development. The materials of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the materials so vigorously attacked by whole-language advocates (K. Goodman, Shannon, Freeman, & Murphy, 1988) in the 1987 Basal Report Card Report at the National Council of Teachers of English meeting in Los Angeles, reflected these compromises all too vividly. Authenticity We should encourage students to read more authentic texts than are found in many basals (and, by the way, in many trade books); we should ask students to read and write for real reasons (the kind real people in the real world have) rather than fake reasons we give them in school. School is too school-like. These lessons of authenticity from the whole-language movement should be acceptable to nearly all teachers of reading. One only wonders why we had to have someone come along and point out that our materials and methods were so unauthentic; then again, in education we seem
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
to need to be reminded often that "the emperor has no clothes"! Integration We do need more integrated curricula. There is no reason to pretend that our reading, spelling, listening, and writing curricula bear no relation to one another. In all of these curricula, subskills have gotten out of hand; there is precious little evidence that subskill mastery adds up to competence in reading, writing, or spelling. We can even eliminate strict mastery criteria; one of the reasons students feel badly about not mastering a certain skill is that they think that we expect them to master it. Those same students tolerate partial mastery all the time in other parts of their lives-basketball, swimming, room cleaning. Perfection in human activity is the exception, not the rule. It is counterproductive to inculcate high mechanical standards if the cost of those standards is a generation of students whose critical thinking is handicapped by their fear of taking cognitive risks. All programs, even basal programs, would benefit from more emphasis on using reading skill than on mastering reading skills. Also, there is no reason to pretend that the literacy curriculum is categorically distinct and separate from the content-area curricula; the realization that reading and writing occur across the curriculum could help both the literacy and the content-area curricula. Student Ability We can make more liberal assumptions about what students know when they show up at school. We can assume that they are born to succeed, not fail, to learn how to be independent rather than to rely on us to fill them with knowledge. We can assume that there is a level at which every student comes to us already literate. Even the 3year-old who recognizes that if an arch is in sight, a hamburger is not far away has learned the basic principle of signs-that our world is filled with things that "stand for" other things. If we assume that young chil-
dren are already literate, we are more likely to adopt a helping role (the teacher as a facilitator of learning) rather than a telling role (the teacher as the font of wisdom) because we will rely on the students to do at least part of the learning themselves. Independence is, or ought to be, the ultimate goal of education. We can and should share authority with students, particularly for planning and assessment. Our current system keeps students far too reliant on others for far too long; even college students have to wait for a professor to tell them how well they write or how much they know about chemistry. This is an issue on which other groups of educators who have little or no stake in whole language would concur. For example, responsibility sharing and self-evaluation are key goals of both cooperative learning (e.g., Johnson & Johnson, 1975; Slavin, Sharan, Hertz-Lazorowitz, Webb, & Schmuck, 1985) and metacognitive training (e.g., Baker & Brown, 1984; Garner, 1987).
What Concerns Me about Whole Language So what is there not to like about this integrated, child-centered, natural curriculum? What could a self-respecting educator, especially one who purports to respect children and teachers, possibly object to? Several aspects of the movement concern me, but I am not sure whether these concerns are characteristics of the movement or simply misunderstandings that I have because I have, in a sense, not read the same text that the whole-language authors wrote. So, let me close this essay by sharing my reading of whole languaze, not so much to condemn the movement as to ask the wholelanguage community whether there is any validity to my interpretation, and where there is not, to ask them to revise the texts that, apparently, they have written. These aspects of the movement, I believe, are causes for concern because they can lead to miscommunication between groups and individuals: a possible reduction of the teachNOVEMBER 1989
COMMENTARY
er's role in the instructional setting, an unintentional elitism, a romantic view of the real world, a tendency to worry more about signs than substance, and a certain political nayvet6 (really a failure to recognize how change occurs in most social settings) that leads to an unfortunate separatist tendency. Possible Miscommunication No. 1 Reduction of the Teacher's Role In whole language, teachers serve a facilitating role rather than a direct-teaching (i.e., telling) role. To use the language of the sixties, whole-language teachers are more interested in discovery learning than expository teaching. In fact, the phrase "leading from behind" is popular among wholelanguage advocates (Newman, 1986). The teacher arranges conditions so that learning can occur. But notice the curious similarity between the whole-language role and the role carved out for the teacher in the worksheet-oriented, skills-management programs growing out of the mastery learning tradition so popular in the 1970s. In those programs, the logic of the teacher-as-manager approach went something like this: Find out what the students cannot do, and then find materials (i.e., worksheets) to allow them to practice those nonmastered skills until mastery is achieved. The teacher's role was to facilitate learning by organizing materials and the classroom environment so that students could learn the skills of reading independently. Of course, there are enormous differences between those early skills-management approaches and whole language, mainly in their standards concerning the nature of the texts to be used (whole texts vs. snippets), the tasks to be completed (real reading or writing vs. some sort of marking or circling or filling in), and the environment in which learning occurs (social vs. individual). But there is an underlying similarity; in both cases, the teacher's job is to arrange conditions to facilitate learning. The strong parallel between the skillsmanagement role and the whole-language
237
role for teachers breaks down for another reason. Most whole-language patrons do not adhere exclusively to a "back-seat" role. In fact, they cannot believe solely in leading from behind if they also argue so vehemently for the importance of teachers providing "demonstrations" (see Short & Burke, 1989, in this issue; Smith, 1981, 1983) of literate activities; like it or not, demonstrations are out front. The issue of demonstrations raises another point about instruction: whether it is called modeling, demonstration, or direct teaching, the evidence for some sort of "public sharing of cognitive secrets" (Paris, Lipson, & Wixson, 1983) with respect to a whole range of strategies is very strong (Pearson & Dole, 1987). It is unclear to me how whole-language advocates react to this strategy-training research. I suspect that they view it as yet another application of heavy-handed, topdown, teacher-controlled instruction. Yet if they do, then how do they distinguish between what they call demonstration and what the strategy-training researchers call modeling? Possible Miscommunication No. 2: Unintentional Elitism Until recently I had always believed that whole-language programs would be especially well suited to children from nonmainstream backgrounds-Hispanics, blacks, the urban and rural poor. My belief was based on the assumption that the materials and methods of the conventional wisdom are biased toward a "typical" white, middle-class, suburban student. Certainly, I reasoned, the conventional wisdom is developed with these students in mind; moreover, there is considerable evidence that middle-class parents make certain that their offspring pick up the skills and attitudes that will help them succeed in our conventional schools (Taylor, Harris, & Pearson, 1988). But two recent articles by Delpit (1986, 1988) have caused me to rethink my position.
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
Delpit's point is that liberal, process-oriented programs doom poor and minority children to subservient roles because they inadvertently deny these children access to the "power code" spoken and written by affluent whites. The mechanism for this denial is unintentional and ironic, according to Delpit. In celebrating the natural language of the oppressed and in rejecting the skills and trappings of school language, process-oriented programs guarantee that affluent whites will always have greater access to the power code. Affluent whites, she argues, by virtue of the fact that they grew up in a power-code environment, fare quite well in process-oriented approaches that celebrate "the natural language of the children." Delpit also provides many examples suggesting that black children, because of their culture, expect linguistic explicitness from adults. A well-meaning liberal white teacher discards the tools of power and "invites" black students to "participate" in her literacy world with a suggestion like, "wouldn't it be a good idea to be thinking about your papers now?" The black students, used to explicitness, regard it as a harmless suggestion, while any knowledgeable middle-class white student will recognize it as power-code talk for "get it done now!" The result is that the white students finish the assignment while the black students are made to appear uncooperative. Or the college composition teacher who, in the egalitarian spirit of cooperative learning, forms peer editing groups so students can learn to learn from one another. Black students reject this approach, and later the instructor learns that they wanted to learn how to write in the power code. Delpit's criticism does not become an apology for direct instruction. She does not recommend a diet of synthetic phonics and rigid grammar rules for all black students. But she does insist that as long as the power code exists, teachers have an obligation to help students learn how to read and write in that code. In the end (1988) she advocates
a kind of bidialectic curriculum in which students become literate in both codes. Although her argument does not destroy the whole-language position on curriculum, it does suggest that whole-language advocates need to examine the complexities and realities of our current social and economic institutions. The cost to children of denying the existence of a very powerful reality may be quite high. Possible Miscommunication No. 3: Romantic Real Worlds The authenticity criterion is, as I have indicated, one of the strongest and most exciting features of whole language. Yet, it too has a dark side. Recall that authenticity is measured in relation to real reading and writing in the real world; often reading and writing in schools are nothing but simulations of that reality (Edelsky & Draper, 1989). The whole-language position assumes that there is something inherently good about reading and writing in the real world. An ideal real world may contain many opportunities for exciting applications of reading and writing in the real world. An ideal real world may contain many opportunities for exciting applications of reading and writing, but there are many real real worlds that possess either drab applications or, even worse, no applications. Compared to some real worlds, the simulated world of schools may seem pretty exciting. As an aside, my guess is that whole-language advocates would argue for greater authenticity for "real-world" tasks, too (and, by so arguing, admit that they have an ideal real world in mind). Possible Miscommunication No. 4: Signs, Not Substance Words carry excess baggage; that is the whole point of metaphors and connotative meaning. To say that a person strode down the avenue is to convey a different meaning than to say that she walked down the avenue. But attitudes toward words can also block communication. Unfortunately, the NOVEMBER 1989
COMMENTARY
metaphorical significance (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, for a discussion of the prevalence and power of metaphor in everyday language) attributed by some whole-language advocates to the language used by those who favor the conventional wisdom has blocked open communication. Certain words are sure to bring an immediate, involuntary, knee-jerk reaction; for example, phrases like classroom control, manipulating
the instructional environment, modeling, guided practice, time on task, skill, or error are certain to raise an eyebrow if not end a conversation. Almost any word or phrase implying a commitment to control, authority, truth, or componential analysis will evoke the reflex in a committed whole-language patron. In fact, Bloome and his colleagues (Bloome, Cassidy, Chapman, & Schaafsma, 1988) devoted an entire chapter to an analysis of the power and control metaphors used by Anderson and his colleagues (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985)in Becoming a Nation of Readers. The unfortunate consequence of this sort of reaction is that it makes it difficult for individuals with different belief systems to find out what they have in common. For example, I know that Smith's (1981) demonstrations are different from what we (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) call modeling. Yet they must be similar in some important, underlying ways. But modeling is part of direct instruction, and a committed wholelanguage scholar is likely to reject anything associated with direct instruction. There may even be occasions when whole-language advocates would tolerate a lesson on punctuation or sound-to-letter correspondence; but to utter phrases such as skill instruction or let's break it down into steps is to end the conversation. Advocates of cognitive apprenticeship learning models (see Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press) argue strongly that situated learning and authentic tasks are preferable to the abstract and contrived learning activities of formal education models. Yet I doubt that dialogues will open
239
between these groups and whole-language scholars because I fear the whole-language scholars will not tolerate their acceptance of modeling, error correction, and task sequencing as important components of cognitive apprenticeship models. I do not mean to imply that the guilt is all on one side; there are plenty of instances in which conventional scholars react strongly to terms such as wholistic, childcentered, and empowerment. In the final analysis, the point is that mutual understanding is likely to be hampered when we put signs before substance in our communication. Perhaps what is needed on both sides of the dialectic are sets of careful descriptions of actual practice coupled with analyses of the outcomes of that practice. Possible Miscommunication No. 5: Political Nai'vetb I am concerned about the strategies for change that I see the whole-language movement adopting. It is certainly grass roots in origin and style; teachers get together in unofficial support groups to share triumphs and tragedies. And it is challenging, or leaving behind, the institutions (administrative entities and publishers) of the conventional wisdom that usually bring change to the classroom; whole language is something you can "smuggle" into your classroom when administrators are not looking, and you start by throwing out the basals in favor of real books. But many of its advocates demand revolution, not evolution. They want us to make an all-or-nothing decision. They do not seem to be willing to let us adapt to change in the way we are accustomed toslowly and gradually as we weigh the validity and relevance of accumulating evidence. That insistence fails to take into account both the gradual and the eclectic nature of teacher change. Teachers tend to be dyedin-the-wool eclectics; when confronted by a novel practice, they examine it in light of their current repertoire and judge its "fit." If they see the new practice as supporting
THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL
one they already use, they may adopt it. Or if they think it provides a better solution than a practice they already have, they may incorporate it into their repertoires. But they will adapt anything they adopt to fit their style and their notion of what works with the students they have to teach. My fear is that in their zeal to convey the excitement and exhilaration of converting to a new way of thinking about curriculum, whole-language advocates may breed a separatism that will ultimately work against their goals. They run the risk of overwhelming us with too much too fast. The other naive aspect of the whole-language view of change is the apparent assumption that whole language will be able to rid the world of the tools of the conventional wisdom-basals and tests. This view fails to recognize that, like it or not, basals and tests fill an ecological niche in our educational world. They provide certain segments in our educational world, usually those with some power, with some minimal guarantees; they can be sure of the curriculum and its outcomes. But they also fill management and monitoring functions for teachers; they are an important part of the "tool kit" teachers use to plan and evaluate instruction. If whole language continues to develop, it will be less likely to destroy the basal reading and the testing industries than it will be to change them drastically. After all, these publishers are not nonprofit institutions; if the market demands different philosophies, teaching styles, or even different types of materials, then the publishers will adapt to the marketplace. They will adapt in the same way that they have already adapted to demands for more authentic literature, more comprehension instruction, more writing, more strategic reading, and more critical thinking. But until a better tool comes along to fill the basal or the test niche, publishers will continue to sell basals and teachers will continue to buy them; they may just look a lot different from the basals so harshly taken to task recently by whole-language advocates.
The Legacy of Whole Language Looking back from the year 2010, how will we regard the period in which we now live? What will we say about the legacy left to us by the whole-language movement? Provided that it can overcome some potential communication and political stumbling blocks, its legacy can be rich. If, as a result of its efforts, the children a decade from now are reading better, more authentic, and more interesting materials, then it will have left a rich legacy. If our tests are fewer in number but closer to what we think real reading and writing are about, then it will have left a rich legacy. If our teachers are more knowledgeable about reading and writing and learning, it will have left a rich legacy. If students learn to read and write boldly, fearlessly, and strategically at an early age, then it will have been worth the effort. If teachers and students have more options in the reading curriculum, then it will have left a rich legacy. But what if the cost of attempting to achieve these goals is a deep rift within the educational field? What if the cost is other groups saying, "I believe that too; don't act as if you had exclusive rights to that idea"? What if the cost is certain groups rejecting any of the principles of whole language because they could not accept them all? What if the cost is that many children get caught in poor programs produced in the heat of intense ideological debates? If these outcomes are the legacy of whole language, then we will have a right to question the revolutionary spirit of the movement. Better, we will say, it had been an evolution.
References Anderson, R., Hiebert, E., Scott, J., & Wilkinson, I. (1985). Becoming a nation of readers: The report of the Commission on Reading. Washington, DC: National Institute of Education. Baker, L., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Cognitive monitoring in reading. In J. Flood (Ed.), Understanding reading comprehension (pp. 21-144). NOVEMBER 1989
COMMENTARY
Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Barthes, R. (1964). Essais critiques. Paris: Seuil. Bloome, D., Cassidy, C. M., Chapman, M., & Schaafsma, D. (1988). Reading instruction and underlying metaphors in Becoming a nation of readers. In J. L. Davidson (Ed.)., Counterpoint and beyond (pp. 5-16). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42. Clay, M. M. (1966). Emergent reading behavior. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Larkin, K. M. (1980). Inference in text understanding. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce, & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 385-407). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Collins, A,, Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (in press). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics. In L. B. Resnick (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Delpit, L. D. (1986). Skills and other dilemmas of a progressive black educator. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 379-385. Delpit, L. D. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58, 280-298. Dewey, J., & Bentley, L. (1949). Knowing and the known. Boston: Beacon. Edelsky, C., & Draper, K. (1989). Authenticity: A purposeful notion. Unpublished manuscript. Phoenix: Arizona State University. Edelsky, C., & Harman, S. (in press). One more critique of testing-with two differences. English Education. Garner, R. (1987). Metacognition and reading comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Goodman, K. S., Shannon, P., Freeman, Y. S., & Murphy, S. (1988). Report card on basal readers. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen. Goodman, Y. (1989). Roots of the whole-language movement. Elementay School Journal, 90, 113-127.
241
Harste, J. C., Woodward, V. A., & Burke, C. L. (1984). Language stories and literacy lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1975). Learning together and alone: Cooperation, competition, and individualization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1918). The project method. Teachers College Record, 19, 319-335. Lakoff, G.,& Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morrow, L., & Smith, J. (in press). The role of assessment in early literacy instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Newman, J. M. (Ed.). (1986). Whole languagetheory in use. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Paris, S., Lipson, M., & Wixson, K. (1983). Becoming a strategic reader. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 293-316. Pearson, P. D., & Dole, J. (1987). Explicit cbmprehension instruction: A review of research and a new conceptualization of instruction. Elementay School Journal, 88, 151-165. Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317344. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literacy work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Short, K. G., & Burke, C. L. (1989). New potentials for teacher education: Teaching and learning as inquiry. Elementay School Journal, 90, 193-206. Slavin, R. E., Sharan, S., Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., Webb., N., & Schmuck, R. (Eds). (1985). Learning to cooperate, cooperating to learn. New York: Plenum. Smith, F. (1981). Demonstrations, engagement and sensitivity: A revised approach to language learning. Language Arts, 58, 103-122. Smith, F. (1983). Reading like a writer. Language Arts, 60, 558-567. Taylor, B., Harris, L. A., & Pearson, P. D. (1988). Reading difficulties: instruction and assessment. New York: Random House. Teale, W. H., & Sulzby, E. (1986). Emergent literacy: Writing and reading. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
http://www.jstor.org
LINKED CITATIONS - Page 1 of 2 -
You have printed the following article: Reading the Whole-Language Movement P. David Pearson The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 90, No. 2, Special Issue: Whole Language. (Nov., 1989), pp. 230-241. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28198911%2990%3A2%3C230%3ARTWM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I
This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from an off-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Please visit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.
References Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning John Seely Brown; Allan Collins; Paul Duguid Educational Researcher, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Jan. - Feb., 1989), pp. 32-42. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-189X%28198901%2F02%2918%3A1%3C32%3ASCATCO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2
Roots of the Whole-Language Movement Yetta M. Goodman The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 90, No. 2, Special Issue: Whole Language. (Nov., 1989), pp. 113-127. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28198911%2990%3A2%3C113%3AROTWM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7
Explicit Comprehension Instruction: A Review of Research and a New Conceptualization of Instruction P. David Pearson; Janice A. Dole The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 88, No. 2. (Nov., 1987), pp. 151-165. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28198711%2988%3A2%3C151%3AECIARO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-S
http://www.jstor.org
LINKED CITATIONS - Page 2 of 2 -
New Potentials for Teacher Education: Teaching and Learning as Inquiry Kathy G. Short; Carolyn L. Burke The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 90, No. 2, Special Issue: Whole Language. (Nov., 1989), pp. 193-206. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-5984%28198911%2990%3A2%3C193%3ANPFTET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K
