The Reading Wars: Understanding the Debate over How Best to Teach Children to Read:

The Reading Wars: Understanding the Debate over How Best to Teach Children to Read by Kenneth Anderson is an article publishes in the Los Angeles Times in 2000. The article focuses on the question “How can schools best teach reading (Anderson, 2000, sect. 1, para. 1)? The article explains that while many (myself included) want to declare peace in the “reading wars” by advocating the usefulness of both techniques, the “war” is about more than the best technique.  It is, Anderson argues, part of a cultural divide between traditional values and “progressive pedagogy” in our schools (Anderson, 2000, sect. 1, para. 2).

Simply stated, those who favor traditional values tend to lean towards the phonics end of the debate. Those who favor progressive values favor whole language. When the article was first published in 2000, Anderson observed that the phonics approach was winning the battle, at least politically, as there was a backlash against the whole language movement and a return to phonics was deemed necessary.  Those philosophically opposed to whole language were bothered by what they saw as a lack of discipline in whole language pedagogy. The movement gained momentum in mainstream America in the nineties, especially among parents and especially in California, where whole language was cited as a cause in declining reading scores (Anderson, 2000, sect. 1, para. 6).

Anderson explains that at the center of the whole language philosophy, are cultural issues. Advocates for whole language have a problem with phonics because it is seen as “rigid, authoritarian and fanatically concerned with the acquisition of skills such as spelling” (Anderson, 2000, sect. 1, para. 8) As such, it deemed “deeply anti-democratic,” and inconsistent with the abstract values of progressive education (Anderson, 2000, sect. 1, para. 8).  Progressively schooled children may not spell well, concludes supporters, but they do have democratic, multicultural values.

What I found most enlightening about this particular article was that it separated out the “effectiveness” debate from the “values” debate.  Everything I have learned about the issue has dealt with whether the phonics approach or the whole language approach or some combination will develop the best reader.  This article looks at another “strand” of the debate – the whole language advocates who defend it on the grounds of progressive education, "caringness" and democratic values.

The article concludes that phonics has won the political debate with whole language, but that the best method of phonics instruction is still unclear (Anderson, 2000, sect. 3, para. 16). Having triumphed over whole language politically and culturally, Anderson notes that the struggle is now to “create practices that will make phonics a tool of reading success rather than simply another forlorn experiment in American education(Anderson, 2000, sect. 3, para. 14).”

Article