i heart reading

yesterday, while surfing the inter-net ("series of tubes"), I found an article in some conservative magazine--which I can't find now--about the debate between phonics-based reading instruction and "whole language learning." this was particularly interesting to me, because: a) I like to read, and I'm sort of intrinsically fascinated about how people become literate; b) my mom teaches kindergarten, and has taught lots of kids to read; and c) JD volunteers once every other week to help one particular girl (a fourth-grader) with remedial reading, and some of the stories are really disspiriting.

Advocates of whole-language learning favor a sort of immersion approach - basically, leave kids in a room with a lot of books, and they'll teach themselves. They are opposed to phonics-based reading (those fabled "Dick and Jane"/Houghton Mifflin primers which stress word-repetition and sounding things out--parenthetically, try sounding out 'Houghton'--that's a toughie!) claiming that such education is the most surefire way to kill kids' burgeoning love of reading and to stifle their young imaginations. According to the article I read (but can't seem to find), educational academics, perhaps unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly favor the whole-language approach, but this gets awfully problematic when whole-language learning is mandated from on-high in bureaucratic fashion. Children from higher socioeconomic brackets are less likely to slip through the cracks, no matter which method is taught; someone is going to make sure they know how to read by an acceptable age. The problem comes disproportionately for poor kids, who, whether they lack an English-speaking parent, have little or no reading material in their homes, or just have parents that don't value education very much, often do get lost in the system. When they aren't given the building blocks of language--the sounds that letters make, for instance--they can sometimes manage to memorize singular small books and pass on to the next grade without ever learning to read. This, apparently, is the case with JD's fourth-grader, who can't seem to sound out "baby books"--the words of her taunting classmates.

If I had just heard the two categories juxtaposed, I surely would have unreflectingly supported "whole language learning" just based on the sound of it; isn't "whole" so much more comprehensive than its alternative? And who wants to kill kids' love of reading? But as I think about it, I suspect that a few people with advanced degrees--those that have had a passing acquaintance with Saussure and Derrida, have bastardized the concepts of linguistic structuralism, and are now passing them off as public school policy, shunning (and even forbidding) some crucial building blocks of learning. Language and literacy are undoubtedly complex, and one certainly wouldn't want to watch kids huffing and puffing to sound things out all day, without connecting their utterance to the meaning of the text (Golden Book) or to imaginative flights of fancy. Nevertheless, it doesn't make good sense to disallow an important component of reading in the interest of "academic correctness." Shouldn't learning to read, in all its manifestations, be empowering?

Out of curiosity, do you remember learning to read? Which components were hardest/most intuitive for you?

the splendor of the seasons

it's raining--and it sure is welcomed. we're not quite living in a dry and dusty land, but the grass is parched. the grey skies and thunder make it a lovely afternoon to be inside, and I'm glad I am. I recently read about a scientist who links that exuberant feeling awakened with the coming of spring to something hardwired in our evolved genes; whether that's the case or not, I have certainly felt that exuberance, as if life were beginning again--and felt as though I myself were capable of absorbing energy directly from all the newly green matter around me. I just finished reading Annie Dillard's The Maytrees, and my thoughts about the seasons as markers of finitude and new beginnings were echoed on each page. That sort of naturalism, combined with the existential reading and philosophy I've been caught up with as of late has me acutely aware of Heidegger's notion of "Being-towards-death." (I'm probably totally freaking my mom out by writing this--sorry, mom, I've been studying philosophy for too long!) I can't help it. From my first class in introductory philosophy with Dr. Neujahr, I've learned that philosophy is "learning how to die well," and I've absorbed so much existentialism along the way--from Kierkegaard's anxiety, to Heidegger's "thrown-ness,"--the state in which we find ourselves, but didn't necessarily ask for--and the practical issues of bioethics which deal inevitably with the end of human life and the possibilities for extending it, and whether the latter is even truly desirable. More conservative critics, in a Heideggerian vein, seem to think that extending life willy-nilly has the potential to trivialize human life, and to rob it of meaning. Our time-boundedness, and awareness of our finitude encourage us to act and to appreciate, to make a mark in the time we have allotted. One's refusal to look her own future death in the face, and to reckon with it, to push it off into the too-distant-future or to pretend it won't happen, can be a refusal to embrace one's own humanity, to live in (presumably) animal-like ignorance and to enjoy animal-like pleasures to the exclusion of a certain seriousness, as well as human and humanizing tasks--culture-building, for instance. I'm beginning to see the ever-closer ties between existentialism, politics, and psychology, a sort of societal-wide procrastination (God knows, I am guilty as an individual!) and excessive individualism that cares not for what comes later, so long as it doesn't affect one's self. This was exemplified to me as of late, when I heard representatives from Chicago's teachers union downplaying the successes of charter schools and other educational ventures, agitating for more money and time. I certainly know that an educational system can't be overhauled overnight, but it seems to me that time is something that early learners don't have in excess. If a child doesn't learn to read by, say, the third grade, what real hope is there for that individual to become capable of genuine learning, or to cultivate a love of civic engagement? The burden for this child does not, certainly, rest on teachers alone, but time is, in this instance, of the essence. A window missed, in this case, will have real consequence, and more for the child than the (presumably literate) unionized teacher. In our time and place, adult illiteracy vastly increases the odds that one's life will be nasty, brutish, and short. One's ability to read (even seemingly pessimistic philosophy) is liberating, allowing one to decode bus schedules and legal contracts (maybe!), but literature also connects us with others and reflexively shows us our place in the world, and gives us hope through access to other possibilities. Literacy is practically and theoretically wrapped up with existential freedom. The changing weather (now the sun is peaking through the clouds), changing seasons, the new year, one's own personal new year (birthday), the start of a school year (or fiscal year), are regular reminders of flux and growth--and finitude. (I just ordered The Now Habit, in an attempt to further my own literacy and to nix my own procrastinating tendencies. Now, if someone would just teach those little kids to read...