"The fierce urgency of now"--MLK, Jr.

We must end the reading wars.... now

(Apologies if you get this twice, maybe even 3 times. I’m a newbie and trying to get the wrinkles out.)

My friend, former colleague, and forever mentor John Willinsky, a fierce warrior for the public’s right to access knowledge that is beneficial to all (see also this), convinced me that if I really cared about one of the 2 post-retirement projects I’d committed to (email me to find out the other one), I need to find a way to communicate more effectively with more of the people I am most interested in reaching. That would be educators and policy-makers, folks who care deeply about reading (or better yet, literacy) education and how to improve it yet don’t typically scroll through the academic and professional education publications I’d spent most of my life trying to break into.

Why this, why now?

Time to end the reading wars, which have been going on longer than any of us has been alive. And I don’t mean Jeanne Chall vs. Ken Goodman. I’m talkin’ early 1800s, Horace Mann vs. Noah Webster.

Notice no embedded links, but if you’re interested, lmk. The peeps I’m talking to find links and references tiresome and tedious. But happy to provide if you’re interested. (Including pdfs of published pieces, but pls don’t tell the publishers.)

My principal thesis in this series is that there are many points of agreement that get ignored by people who—for whatever motivations—seem to want to keep the wars or whatever going interminably. This is dysfunctional and harmful to teachers, students, their families, and the society as a whole.

The kind of community I’m looking to build

I want to engage anyone who is tired of the endless and senseless arguments, wars, skirmishes, and kerfuffles about teaching reading. We must ask ourselves, “Who’s interests are being served?” Not teachers’. Not students’. Not their families’. Certainly not the society’s. So who’s? The only answer I can come up with is the circular “Those who keep the reading wars raging.”

Then the next question is, “To what purpose?” I can only guess… legacies? world views? identities? intellectual kinspeople and investments? other kinds of investments? Your guess is as good as mine. As I hope you’ll see in my subsequent posts, it’s certainly not the evidence, which is very clear on some points and clearly inconclusive on others.

Specifically….

Among the topics I hope to explore are:
• What are points of agreement on reading research, aka where’s the “common ground”? Does it exist? (HINT: Yes)

• What’s the deal with “science of reading”? Why is it such a lightning rod of controversy?

• What about English Learners (ELs or ELLs) aka Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) or Multilingual Learners (MLs or MLLs), henceforth EL/EB/MLs? Whatever your acronym of choice, does the “science of reading” apply to them?

• How about bilingual education? Does bilingual education stand in conflict with the “science of reading?

• What about neuroscience? What contribution, if any, does it make to understanding how individuals become literate and how teachers and others can help promote literacy learning?

I’m very interested in exploring other questions, although I can’t promise to be particularly knowledgeable on all or even many. I’m hoping those who are will join in, not as partisans, or combatants, of one “side” or the other (eg, phonics vs meaning), but as curious and engaged participants in the reading conversations, rather than the reading wars.

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