P. L. Thomas, professor of
education at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, taught high
school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He
is an author, essayist, editor and Award winner. In this conversation he was interviewed
by Sherry
Sanden, Co-editor, Talking Points. Her contribution is not recorded here.
Go to:
https://library.ncte.org/journals/tp/issues/v32-2/31300 for full interview (sent to me
by Brian Cambourne, June 2021).
I have summarized Paul Thomas’s
contribution.
The article
begins… at a time when some media figures and others insist on a
one-size-fits-all, phonics-centric approach to reading—and attempt to delegitimize
holistic, meaning-based reading instruction—Dr. Paul Thomas
published a book to help provide clarity. How to End the Reading War and
Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers,
and People Who Care (2020). [This book] arrived in a world where literacy
educators observe with dismay the replacement of their expertise with a zeal
for the captivating rhetoric of the so-called “science of reading".
I [Paul] was kind of pulled into
the science of reading (SoR) debate through my public work e.g. I keep a blog
…a good bit of critical public work about how the media covers education
broadly. I have two strong commitments: One is to a[n] historical grounding of our
understanding of education, and the other, obviously, is literacy and how
that’s viewed in the media. So, it just seemed like something I needed to do. I
was very strongly encouraged by the literacy community that I’m a part of, and
that meant a lot to me.
Paul continues, Emily Hanford’s
“missionary zeal” for the science of reading, juxtaposed with her disregard for
actual scientific evidence and lacking any historical context and the SoR
advocates especially the dyslexia band … pretty nasty and very aggressive, and
they are not really concerned about any sort of dialogue. [Hanford] discovered
a field that’s more than a century old in the United States…the gap between
research and practice. So, this is an old and somewhat tired pose on a topic. I
would say the narrow and possibly extremely important difference, now, is the
role of social media. I think the parental and the dyslexia advocacy element
and the advent of social media has really given sort of a bold-ness to the
movement that it didn’t have before; social media has allowed things to be
amplified and probably distorted. And I think there’s a good bit of naivete
among the parents of children with dyslexia. Honestly, I am 100 percent on
their side. No child with any need, whether we call it special or not, should
be ignored by our school systems. That’s one thing I have zero tolerance for.
Every single child should be served. But what’s happened is the needs of a few
have become the driving force of mandates for all children.
I think we just don’t want to
admit that the reasons students aren’t developing as readers, the way we would
like … One, they never have, which may be some evidence that that’s just a
reality. Two, it’s clearly strongly linked to their home and their communities
and their socioeconomic status.
[Especially in USA], teachers
increasingly have been told exactly what to do, whether they agree with it or
not, and then are blamed when it doesn’t work because the solution doesn’t fit
the problem. Those who believe in nonstop phonics instruction or universal
dyslexia screening certainly seem to have the ear of the media and legislators,
while the voices of those of us who have actually spent time sitting beside
children and teaching them to read are frequently disregarded.
1. Maybe we [especially balanced
literacy educators] are not doing enough to get our voices out there? We are
terrible at explaining what they know to the public. The SoR movement pushes
the simple view of reading, which is very compelling to the public. The problem
for us is that reading and teaching reading are never simple. That is really
hard to communicate to the public because the public likes simple messages.
And, furthermore, balanced
literacy, is a philosophy … there are not instructional templates.
2. Classroom literacy teachers
aren’t allowed to be public advocates. If they are, they’re risking their
careers. Holistic literacy, the complex literacy folk who I’m among, is a hard
message. It’s really complicated and difficult.
3. SoR movement is a very privileged
movement. And I think that most of us who are very privileged—it just seems
like reading happened. So, it sounds simple. That seems obvious, and it never
was that simple.
Teachers who daily are working
with individual students and individual needs, need to find [education]
communities so they feel confidence and they also feel professionally and
personally safe in their practices because they do know more than people who
haven’t been in a classroom.
“Teaching and teachers must be,
instead, guided by evidence, both the evidence of a wide range of research
types and evidence drawn from the individual students in any classroom. To
teach is to quilt together what a teacher knows about the field, reading for
example, and then what instructional approaches will address where any student
is and where any student wishes to go” [p. 105]. This is perhaps the failure
about which I am most incensed, regarding a philosophy that prescribes a
systematic and intensive approach that is identical for all students. With all
of the work that has been done ascribing pedagogical importance to students’
strengths and needs and backgrounds, how can we still be questioning the
importance of evidence drawn from the children sitting in front of us?
To a fault, I am a student-centered
teacher - what I want to do is to teach every student one-on-one. Kids who sat
in my [class]room, worked individually, I gave them feedback, and they revised.
[What is happening is] we just
want to fill up a room with 30 kids, make the teacher the center of the room,
and fix all the kids. So, there’s a pathology to that, there’s a whole ideology
around that, that I completely 100 percent reject. I think there’s nothing to
fix about a child; I think a child is a child. Eight-year-olds act like eight-year-olds,
and it’s perfectly healthy and normal. I do think every student deserves
whatever that student needs. And then you have to also keep in mind that for
some of us, our goals are different than what I call the technocrats—that’s
what they’re looking for. I want human autonomy. I like life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. I idealize that.
I think literacy is the key to
that. And again, that’s not something that is popular. Politicians don’t like
that. Parents don’t like that.
I want to put all the focus on
what is the accountability movement: that has been in-school reform only. My
problem with that is, it’s very much a “blame the victim” mentality. We want
children to set aside their lives when they walk through the school door. We
want teachers to be superhuman. And all of these things are unrealistic. I
think probably the perfect example of that is, No Child Left Behind wanted 100
percent of students to be proficient by 2014 (U.S.A. initiative).
You can’t get 100 percent success
in anything; it’s nearly impossible with humans.
Instead, I demand, that policy is
equity based. I think all of us need to learn how to talk that way. not
say equal, not to say equality, but to say equity. Equity means that a student
identified with dyslexia gets what that student needs, even though it’s
different than the student who is having trouble at school because [of]
different reasons, different needs.
So those are two different
worlds. They don’t need the same reading program. They may not even need the
same teacher. They may not even need the same school. So, I’m a huge advocate
for all of us better understanding what the concept of equity means and being
able to talk about it in terms of policy and practice. So, what would be an
equitable policy, what would be an equitable classroom practice—and to be able
to talk that way and to give people evidence of what that looks like.
Every child deserves whatever
that child needs to be an eager and critical literate human;
however, there simply is not a single prescription for what that need may be
for any child.
Phonics misses the critical part.
It focuses too much on just decoding and not enough on understanding or
challenging the text you read, and certainly sitting and doing any kind of
worksheets or program does not have, the joy that a picture book does.
Stephen Krashen constantly says:
access to books, access to text, in the home, in the school—that’s where our
commitment should be. And we would have kids eager if they were surrounded with
books and they were around people that have found joy in books.
Can I add, being a classroom and
Reading Recovery teacher: a Literacy/pedagogy consultant: a Lectutor
(Sessional) in teacher education at Flinders University: an author of many
literacy books and a South Australian Award winner. I concur with everything that
Paul Thomas believes in and writes about.
Liz Simon
