I’ve enjoyed A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor’s radio show, for many years. You see my husband is from northern Minnesota and Lake Wobegon is a quaint, entertaining, even hilarious picture of rural Minnesota life. Fact of the matter is Garrison Keillor is one superb story teller. So good that we overlook his reflexive Minnesota liberalism and general snarkiness toward anything politically conservative.
Anyway, he’s published a column in Salon lamenting with sincerity and sorrow the injustice that 27% of kids cannot read. And the problem isn’t the kids, it’s the education establishment. For a devoted Liberal this is a brave thing to say:
Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about theories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.
Incredibly, he hints that President Bush may actually have a clue when it comes to education standards and NCLB.
There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, especially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.
Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted and will read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson; it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter. The No Child Left Behind initiative has plenty of flaws, but the Democrats who are trashing it should take another look at the Reading First program. It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children.
I very much appreciate an open, honest debate that focuses on what’s best for kids not on a political agenda. How refreshing!
H/T: D-Ed Reckoning
Great post! I enjoy Garrison Keillor to so I’m impressed that he got past all the political stuff to give his honest opinion. Thanks for sharing.
Never really watched his show or read his columns. Good to hear from a liberal who can see truth even if it comes from the opposition.
My first daughter, read to from birth, learned to read using the “whole language” method. She doesn’t spell very well.
Second child has a learning disability in written language and learned through years of one-on-one specialized instruction.
Third child learned, with very little assistance, using a tried and true phonics method. But she’s one of “those girls” — an innate speller and voluminous reader.
Fourth child was adopted at 6 1/2 with no prior learning. At all. He learned to read through a very tedious, sequential phonics approach.
Fifth child, another girl, learned by what I call “the magic method”. She was read to and then, one day, she could read. Hallelujah! As number five, there wasn’t a lot of time. . .
The key for each was student-specific instruction. As homeschoolers, we are privileged to provide that.
I’m a little partial to true phonics though. You gotta love good old Dick and Jane!
February 3, 2008
This is far more complex that Keillor begins to imagine. No educators advocate abandoning phonics. However, there are many steps to engaging children in literacy that are pre phonics. Phonics is just one component and no component should be taught without a meaningful context. All teachers know this. They just try to get on with it while NCLB takes away their funding, holding a knife to the back of great teachers.
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