End of the Reading Wars by Joe Smydo, an article published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in 2007, neatly sums up where we are today in the so-called reading wars. He acknowledges that today the issue isn’t whether the phonics or whole language approach is better, but how to blend those philosophies to best teach reading to a child (Smydo, 2007, para 2). While he cites growing academic acceptance of the balanced approach, he also attributes federal intervention and regulation as a big reason for how reading is taught today.
The U.S. Department of Education distributes $1 Billion annually in its Reading First program to schools that use “proven methods” (i.e., phonics) to teach reading. The No Child Left Behind Act likewise mandates the use of “scientifically proven” methods. As a result, the whole language-phonics debate is necessarily “dampened” as districts have these mandates in mind when they adopt a reading program (Smydo, 2007, para 5).
New controversies seem to be replacing the whole language-phonics debate such as excessive testing and burdensome paperwork for educators. I believe that the history of this debate was a necessary element to understanding how and why we teach reading the way we do in today’s classrooms, but it seems that the reading wars are largely dead, “over-sized rants of academic extremists.” As Smydo quotes on educator: It’s time “to hold a big funeral service and bury this casket" (Smydo, 2007, para 32).
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