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sketching out the "assault on the alphabet" post for the Open History of American Edu project tl;dr 100 years ago in the us it became mainstream to not teach kids the alphabet while trying to teach them to read. this is as bad an idea as it seems and literacy has suffered for it
tl;dr of the project: i'm making an online annotated edition of John Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education" with all the sources embedded alongside the text (hyperlink all history!) + writing additional essays like these indiegogo link → https://t.co/WRrtIL7sdJ https://t.co/C7lneRlnsv
longer tl;dr: learning how the letters of the alphabet work had always part of reading edu. in the mid 1800's the "word-method" or "look-say method" began to spread in the US, which involved having kids memorize whole words, and forgo learning the letters of the alphabet
there is no secret genius here. it's such a silly idea that I have trouble expressing how bad it is because when i describe the look-say method people immediately invent a much better method in their head because it doesn't occur to them that someone could be this wrong
Horace Mann is often mentioned as the og champion of the look-say, but Colonel Francis Parker did most of the on the ground work of spreading it, and John Dewey intellectually legitimized the method as the progressive edu movemnt became the system, look-say became mainstream
(this all happened across the 1890's-1930's) in the 100 years since there's been 2-3 cycles of: public uproar about illiteracy -> "new" cirriculum that's same thing with diff spin -> people forget -> repeat 50's-60's had "whole language", 90's had "balanced literacy"
it seems like the past few years might be another cycle, though i'm less versed in the current state of affairs than in the history this is a solid article about the current incarnation, and it really is "vibes based literacy" https://t.co/wNLRxiSl4X https://t.co/9vJHEO3mEc
look-say is really and truly ✨Just A Vibe✨, and it's a shit vibe. it really loses on all fronts any time people have studied effectiveness of diff teaching methods, it loses theoretically and intuitively it doesn't make sense so... how the fuck did it get so big?
✨BIG SURPRISING CLAIM✨ look-say and it's ilk weren't failed good-faith attempts at teaching literacy they were half-assed excuses pushed by people who didn't really care for mass literacy but knew they couldn't get away with straight up refusing to teach reading
G. Stanely Hall was an academic super star big-man-on-the-block at the turn of the 20th century. he mentored and endorsed John Dewey's pedagogical agenda this guy also thought "eh, illiterates live better lives anyways who cares about reading?" https://t.co/PMKdBbZtZP
this is a quote from Hall's book "how to teach reading" to be 100% clear, he is not talking about a *specific* method of teaching to read being "almost literally mind breaking", he's talking about WRITTEN LANGUAGE ITSELF being inherently "almost literally mind breaking" https://t.co/zHs5dYxHA1
this is not a "basically reasonable guy" who's "just" trying to correct away from disembodied STEMlords this is a guy who sees "book-learning" (i.e, written language) as probably almost worthless, and literacy as a brutal hazing ritual it might not be right to subject people to/
/and he claims all this WHILE BEING AT THE TOP OF THE ACADEMIC WORLD and having spent his whole life profiting from language, like WTF! this is the kind of euridite academic anti-intellectual which i didn't know existed in a sincere form
more pointers to the claim that Hall and Dewey and the progressive edu movement wasn't really interested in teaching people how to read: Hall and many others not only thought that reading instruction should be delayed, but that it really shouldn't even happen in schools https://t.co/cSyY5sXh1a
if someone's reason for not being concerned by high illiteracy rates is "at least they aren't fucking DORK" i simply do not believe that any literacy method they endorse is one they have thought thru and are invested in succeeding https://t.co/Z84n9lM8wY
Dewey, who was more directly involved in the progressive education movement and ran a whole laboratory school at UChicago, wasn't much more onboard with literacy than Hall, though he had to savvy to not wax poetically about the Gentle Beauty of the Illiterate
his essay "on the primary education fetish" is decently clear tl;dr "sure, literacy used to be the bottleneck to accessing All Of The Worlds Knowledge in the past, but times have changed!" and never goes into why the changes of the time have obsolesced literacy https://t.co/ezonYtJs7R
it's such a weird essay to read. he keeps emphasizes "the times are changing and reading matters less" but it's not like everyone had audio/video iphones or something and he doesn't spell out HOW the effects of the industrial rev imply literacy doesn't matter anymore
my guess at his underlying position is something like: "hey, we cracked the code of production, we've got ample surplus, you don't need to know shit or innovate, just chill out guys we got you" basically a Wall-E world argument, just 120+ years ago https://t.co/7qBIKnmlyL
right so one chunk of the reasons to believe that the word-method was an intentional anti-literacy effort is that many of the key players state clearly that they don't think that kids learning to read is that important the OTHER main reason is that/ https://t.co/G4ntjApBFJ
✨BIG SURPRISING CLAIM✨ look-say and it's ilk weren't failed good-faith attempts at teaching literacy they were half-assed excuses pushed by people who didn't really care for mass literacy but knew they couldn't get away with straight up refusing to teach reading
choosing the word-method can't be viewed as SIMPLY a politicized battle between word-method Progressives who loved child-centric stuff and ABC/phonics method Traditionalists who were about Order & Discipline there were MANY other well-known methods around with compatible vibes
some prelim facts 1. learning how letters work is obviously hella important for learning to read english 2. the traditional "ABC method" did teach alphabet/phonics, and also often spent a silly amount of time drilling unnecessary syllable combos before letting kids read https://t.co/ASS3IfQVL9
3. word-method was framed as "kids are bored and intimidated by drilling the alphabet and syllable combos, if we just start with memorizing words they can be connected to the usefulness of reading immediately! and anyways, kids pick up reading naturally, method isn't v important"
"love of learning" "fuck drills" "motivation to read" where all big deals to progressive ed word-method folks. creativity, reading to really FEEL what it's about, not just to "mechanically recite" etc. well, the vibes of all of those things were big deals to them at least
the idea of "just have kids memorize whole words" that actually *can* work, but that would require WAY more regimented drilling than Dewey et al would ever be game for so only a small set of words would be drilled, only loosely and it was asserted "kids would intuit the rest"
which... doesn't really happen what does happen is sometimes kids figure out the alphabet on their own, or they have someone at home who actually teaches them to read so congratz! all you did was create bigger edu disparities
a thing that's infuriating here: it's bad that the free public edu system used a method that required home support to reliably work well it's even WORSE that they obscured the fact that what they were doing wasn't functional
like, yeah, part of why the overworked single mom doesn't read to her kids is because she's busy as fuck and tired as fuck but it's also because SHE THOUGHT THERE WAS SOMEONE ELSE WHO'S JOB IT WAS TO TEACH HER KIDS TO READ
okay, back to "literacy wasn't the aim" two VERY different methods ending up with the name "word-method" one historian groups them as "word-to-reading" (memorize words, just keep doing that) and "word-to-letters" (memorize a few words, use them to learn the alphabet in context) https://t.co/KiLeqnxZ4W
word-to-letters is actually normally what people invent for themselves when i try to tell them about the word-method word-to-letters makes a lot of sense! it's got all the right vibes! it's practitioners where all about child-centric edu! https://t.co/RRz6esvZRh
there is no secret genius here. it's such a silly idea that I have trouble expressing how bad it is because when i describe the look-say method people immediately invent a much better method in their head because it doesn't occur to them that someone could be this wrong
before the progressive edu movement centralized the public school system and became dominant, the word-to-letter method was just as popular as the word-to-reading method! both starkly contrasted with the trad ABC method, both had Good Child-Centric Progressive Vibes!!
though i haven't found documents as explicit as people like Dewey going "hmmmmm, nope not that one", the word-to-letter method was popular enough and its vocal proponents were intersecting enough with Dewey and others that it's not really plausible that they weren't aware of it
in sum: the hegemony of the look-say word-to-reading type methods was not an honest mistaken attempt to teach literacy vastly better tools which had the right political affiliations were at hand, but were ignored, which makes sense given the key actors explicit views on literacy
i WISH this was just weird lamentable history, but reading edu is still fucked, and the torch of look-say passed to "whole language" in the 60's and "balanced literacy" in the 90's though word-to-reading is way less hegemonic these days, it's still common in plenty of schools
a story from the book "leaving johnny behind" Anthony Pedriana, a long time teacher+principal is about to retire (1997) & kinda depressed that they do such a shit job at teaching kids to read https://t.co/Kr2Lmro6cn
the 30% below reading level wasn't because they were under-resourced. they had lots of time/money/professionals devoted to helping kids with reading specifically, and this was normal in their district. still shit results https://t.co/fI328Hiahs
new teacher: "i got some kids behind on reading. i wanna try something crazy, something bold, something unheard of" principal: "what?" teach': "i'm gonna drill them on phonics" principal: "... that goes against literally all of our training, but what they hell, go for it" https://t.co/mQZ0RkWJNA
it worked great! the principal was super hyped! somehow they'd all been wrong but now there was an idea about how to make things right! trying to share the idea with other's resulted in a degree of stonewalling mans had never seen before in his life https://t.co/t9JhEXxq9q
okay, that's enough thread for today if you want to help fund this becoming a full-length essay or are into the core "Open History of American Edu" project follow the indiegogo link in the qt and contribute! https://t.co/v37H64gu6w
tl;dr of the project: i'm making an online annotated edition of John Gatto's "The Underground History of American Education" with all the sources embedded alongside the text (hyperlink all history!) + writing additional essays like these indiegogo link → https://t.co/WRrtIL7sdJ https://t.co/C7lneRlnsv
@natural_hazard I do believe there's a zero-sum tradeoff between literacy and reading of faces/geographic features, and literacy introduces a change in structure of the brain that makes it practically impossible to "go back".