How The “War” Started…California Revisited: What happened in the 1990’s?

The last entry about Anderson’s article in 2000 got me thinking.  In reviewing the more recent literature, I have to admit that the reading “wars” did not really seem like much of a battle.  Most recent educators and researchers seemed to come out the way I did in favoring a balanced approach to teaching reading using both phonics and whole language techniques.  Within this balance, there are differing views about which should have the greater emphasis, how each should be implemented in the classroom, but there does not seem to be much of a “war” in this day and age.  Anderson’s article, however, alluded to a cultural and political divide that existed between whole language and phonics advocates that was a lot more prevalent ten or fifteen years ago.  He also referred to a backlash against whole language that occurred in the late 1990’s, particularly in California. Thus, I did some poking to further explore the roots of the so-called war.  

I came across an article published in Educational Leadership in 1999 by Rona F. Flippo entitled Redefining the Reading Wars: The War Against Reading Researchers. The article focuses on the 44^th annual Convention of the International Reading Association in San Diego, California. At the convention, only teachers who emphasized phonemic awareness were allowed to give workshops to California teachers (Fillipo, 1999, 38).  Shockingly, a California law actually restricted who could provide in-service instruction to teachers. If a reading specialist had a whole language philosophy, he or she was not allowed to give workshops.  The author refers to the “McCarthy-like militance” that politicians,  spurred on by the media’s need for headlines, gave life to the reading wars (Fillipo, 1999, 38).

Fippo gave most politicians the benefit of the doubt that they were well-meaning and just trying to improve reading education, but criticizes the “black and white” approach.  She adds that most researchers even back then would concur that teaching reading was not a simple either/or situation, and that there was no one way to teach anything.  When California’s reading scores fell into a last place tie, however, California citizens and politicians needed a scapegoat (Fillip, 1999, 38).  Whole language, and the lack of phonics skills, was the easy target.  Private citizens with axes to grind, newspapers looking for headlines, researchers trying to make a name for themselves and politicians looking for votes “ganged up” on the whole language approach and the reading war had begun (Fillipo, 1999, 39).

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