KINDER'S COMMENTARY: WHOLE LANGUAGE FAILS IN THE WEST

The rout of Whole Language rolls remorselessly on. Last fall I reported in a column on California's devastating experience with this "movement," surely one of the worst fads ever to hit modern education. And given the outbreak of faddishness that has gripped so much of modern education, that's saying a lot.

Nor is this variety of faddishness limited to the trendy climes of the left coast. Last December a Bootheel father of four with children in elementary school told me that his first-grader was in a whole-language program at his school, which is located in Stoddard County. The results were so abysmal, he reported, that this father had informed the president of the local school board that if his son were to learn to read at all, he would have to do it at home.

The nation-state of California is home to 32 million people and, were it a separate country, the world's seventh largest economy. That state's public school system is the nation's largest purchaser of textbooks, one of many reasons it is such a trend-setting state. As you read on, consider that a National Assessment of Educational Progress report last year informed Americans that 70 percent of fourth-graders aren't reading at grade level. Some of us would call that a looming catastrophe.

Now comes more documentation. From the April 21 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle -- not exactly a bastion of right-wing journalism -- comes a lengthy treatment. It's arresting title: "Blackboard Bungle: How `Whole Language' Kept a Whole Lot of California Schoolkids from Learning to Read." Some excerpts:

"While the techniques known as `whole language' may seem bizarre, they now predominate in California, the hottest fad since `open' classrooms of the 1970s. ... Whole language philosophy holds that the skills-based teaching approach, which emphasizes phonics, spelling, grammar and memorization, turns reading into a hated chore, alienating kids from books. So since 1987, California schools have used a reading `framework' created by state educators that plays down such skills.

"`The core idea of whole language,' says Mel Grubb, of the California Literature Project, `is that children are forced to learn skills. ... The enjoyment and wonder of reading the story are absorbed just as the skills are absorbed.' ...

"But whole language, which sounds so promising when described by its proponents, has proved disastrous when applied to -- and by -- real people. In the eight years since whole language swept California, fourth-grade reading scores have plummeted, according to the NAEP. Indeed, California fourth-graders are now such poor readers that only children in Louisiana and Guam -- both hampered by pitifully backward education systems -- get worse scores.

"Hundreds of grade schools banned spelling tests, saying they stifled children. Phonics was prohibited by principals who said it was meaningless to kids, citing such familiar absurdities as: The cat sat on a fat hat. ...

"... A revolution was brewing in the classrooms. Whole language gurus such as Ken and Yetta Goodman, of the University of Arizona, were selling the romantic notion that childhood reading was a `natural' act that was being repressed by teachers hooked on low-level issues like word recognition and letters. Whole language was touted as a smash in New Zealand -- but no rigorous evaluation had been conducted there. Proponents instead relied heavily upon theorists such as Frank Smith, who in his `Reading Without Nonsense' insisted, `there are no rules of reading.'"

Former state superintendent of public instruction Bill Honig says, "Things got way out of hand. ... We totally misjudged which voices would take charge of the schools. We never dreamed it would be driven to this bizarre edge. ..."

Mr. Honig's successor, Delaine Eastin, appointed a task force that surveyed the full extent of the catastrophe and recommended going back to phonics. "But Eastin has been met with a palace revolt in her department and from local bureaucracies such as the Los Angeles County Office of Education in the south and the Petaluma School District in the north -- just two of the scores of defiant local bureaucracies where whole language ideologues remain firmly in control."

And so it goes in today's school wars. And public education officials wonder why home-schooling is exploding along with support for full school choice. Meanwhile I wonder: How many whole-language ideologues are running wild in our Missouri teachers colleges, and in the public schools of the Show Me State?

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.