Mark Silverman is a reflector on the human condition and is based in Ithaca, NY. He does not like George Bush, just like half the people of the United States who do not.

I’m glad I’m not young anymore.

- Maurice Chevalier

[Coles, Gerald: Reading the Naked Truth: Literacy, Legislation and Lies; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 184 pgs.]

In Washington D.C. there are cute, old-fashioned, little red schoolhouse entrances at the U.S. Department of Education. These were constructed by the current Bush administration. Walking past, the schoolhouses are an odd appendage to a modern office building. A lot of attention and money went into creating this quaint face for a huge bureaucracy. In many ways, the entrances seem to represent mixed motives, strong nostalgia for the past attached to an up-to-date superstructure, mingling fuzzy myth with stark reality.

Back in the days of the one room school, many children did not thrive or advance beyond the rudimentary education provided by a rural institution of agricultural/small town America. Textbooks were limited in quality and quantity. The curriculum had to accommodate a range of children’s ages and abilities. There were no standardized tests to measure the performance of students or the skills of teachers.

Looking backwards, the conservatives who now dominate the United States have the power to pick and choose, and reinterpret those parts of the idealized education of earlier generations that are deemed politically appropriate. National policies are building an education system that promotes selected values and behaviors in children, such as obedience to authority. Modern research provides “evidence-based techniques” so that schooling in America can be harnessed to shape the population of the country, and the schools can become a handmaid in creating a manageable electorate. Thus, the government of George W. Bush, “the education President,” seeks to cultivate new generations by presiding over the re-working of policy and practice in education. Such influence can be understood by looking at a salient example: how we teach reading to children.

In his new book, “Reading the Naked Truth” (Heinemann, 2003), Gerald Coles dissects the studies that established the basis for conclusions reached by the National Reading Panel and the National Institute of Child and Human Development. Recommendations from these groups led to recent legislation by the U.S. Congress, the No Child Left Behind Act. ‘No Child Left Behind’ is now emblazoned across the front of those red schoolhouses tacked onto the Department of Education.

Coles, an educational psychologist and writer, analyzes the politics and process behind the enactment of No Child Left Behind. In his book, Coles notes that the National Reading Panel began its work by whittling a vast database of literature (100,000 studies) down to 104 studies considered relevant. The Reading Panel, as designated arbiters of education, evaluated the work in these studies before concluding that phonics (a skills-oriented approach, emphasizing awareness of sounds and the symbols that represent them) was the crucial technique for teaching children how to read. The logistics of reading were emphasized, while the content of material, comprehension and interpretation of ideas were considered to be of minimal importance. From this point of view, children learn best within a cultural/historical vacuum. As a result of the Panel’s deliberations, phonics is now mandated for all schools in the United States.

With regard to the data considered by the National Reading Panel, Coles re-examines the selected studies in detail, and finds that the Panel chose to accept as fact a series of conclusions drawn from research replete with difficulties: methodological error, non-obvious conclusions, misinterpretations, and outright misstatements. He also points out that while the notables on the National Reading Panel included people from various fields, there was no one who actually taught beginning reading. Without a voice from the nuts and bolts zone, the “streets” of reading instruction, the Panel nevertheless opted to choose one particular technique as the fundamental way to teach. “Reading the Naked Truth” examines how the U.S. government used reading research to create educational policy.

The whole language approach to reading is an alternative to the emphasis on phonics and word decoding training. Coles describes whole language teaching as emphasizing teacher decision-making in the classroom, fostering an atmosphere for “more collaborative, inquiry-based, meaning centered” learning that values “student experience and knowledge.” The phonics approach mandates a standardized, content-free curriculum for acquiring specific skills through rote learning. In contrast, whole reading utilizes a variety of strategies (such as story reading and writing) embedded in examples drawn from human experience. Children learn about the world while they acquire reading skills. Comprehension of content, discussion, and evaluation of material become part of the learning process. Phonics instruction is not precluded in the whole language approach; it is one of the strategies available to teachers.

In considering the Reading Panel’s selected studies, Coles finds little evidence supporting the Panel’s definitive conclusion: that phonics is clearly superior to whole language. His analysis finds the studies show no prevailing, significant differences in their results when the two approaches are compared. In addition, he finds that phonics as the sole technique is not superior to use of phonics on an as-needed basis, and that phonics is not superior for teaching comprehension. Also, for children considered “at risk,” and for children from low income families, he finds that phonics is not superior to whole reading.

“Reading the Naked Truth” is an important work, a book dealing with research on a subject matter that should not be considered arcane. The political implications are too significant to ignore, and Coles connects the dots more precisely in other writings (see “Learning to Read and the ‘W Principle’”, forthcoming in Rethinking Schools, Summer 2003). Here, Coles provides the patient reader with an incisive case study of how information becomes self-evident, regardless of its validity. He takes on the power structure in the field of education and shows how the findings of designated researchers led to the decision that a specific technique (phonics) proved most effective, and how this conclusion was approved by a government-appointed panel of experts. The mandated technique could then be disseminated to the country, to schools and parents who were assured teachers now utilized the best practice available. In this process, phonics will come to be accepted as the obvious, correct way to teach reading. While not everyone accepts the truth of such “evidence-based,” government-mandated practice, the vast majority of schools in America will conform. Institutions not in compliance face penalties, including loss of funding.

Part of the conservative agenda in the U.S. is to create a focused climate of ideas, techniques, and policy to reinforce certain reality constructions in the country. Children educated and socialized to develop a sanitized, content-less cognitive style for acquiring new information (such as reading instruction that is focused only on phonics) can more easily be guided toward desired attitudes, values, and behaviors. Complicit institutions (education, as well as mass media and religious groups) will have plenty of incentive, patriotic and monetary, to participate in policies sponsored by the government, legitimating the practice for the majority of people.

Benjamin Franklin warned that the end of the American experiment would come if the populace were corrupted. The U.S. government is now attempting to establish its control by reducing diversity at many levels of society. In the area of education and child development, Gerald Coles shows us how a deceptively benign effort to find the best way to teach children to read is being used to construct a powerful potential for manipulation and control of the populace. Once this is achieved, then warfare, imperialism and world domination can fall within the comfort zone of a people living in their newly minted dystopia.