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From: "Michael Massey" <MJM@srskansas.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-WORKPLACE:3085] Re: Groff on Gardner v Hirsch debate
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Thanks, Jeanne, for your comments and the attached article. Our daughter is a high school freshman in a school district which uses the "whole language" approach. Until recently, she was pretty much functionally illiterate. She always managed to get A's and B's, however, because of her extremely strong auditory learning abilities and many adaptive behaviors.
Her mother and I consistently advocated for her at school and tried to get the district to give her special help. She didn't qualify, however, because of her grades. Her homework became "our" homework. She was unable to get any of it done in school and brought it home at night. She's very self-motivated and would stick with it until it was finished, often having to work until 11 pm or later. We would sit there with her, helping her identify words, explaining concepts, and trying to come up with supplementary aids, such as flashcards and video tapes.
We could have avoided all this by letting her fail on her own and thus qualify for special education resources. We knew, however, that this would be devastating for her.
Earlier this year, we were finally in a position to take he to Sylvan Learning Center. The initial testing showed that she had a 4th grade reading level. She was been going to Sylvan twice a week since Spring and is picking up many of the core phonetic concepts she missed. Her reading level has gone up dramatically. So has her confidence and interest in reading. She is able to get much of her homework done in school and is able to do most of the work she brings home on her own. She still has quite a way to go before she catches up with her peers, but she's rapidly moving in the right direction.
Michael Massey
>>> "eca@fastlane.net" <eca@fastlane.net> 11/02/99 11:58AM >>>
This is submitted as a follow-up to previous discussions on soft skills and
learning styles. Literacy begins in K-3. Illiterate adults were most likely
mistrained, hence requiring remediation. What a shame educators didn't get
it right the first time.
Jeanne
=====================================================================
The Gardner Versus Hirsch Debate
on Teaching Johnny to Read
By Patrick Groff
Professor of Education Emeritus
San Diego State University
On September 11, 1999, the New York Times printed results of a debate between
education professor Howard Gardner and English professor E. D. Hirsch called,
"Opposing Approaches So Johnny Can Read." The Times' account of this dispute
is highly significant since both professors are renowned for strikingly
different views on their topic.
Gardner has become well-known in educational circles for his theory that
students bring to school what he calls multiple intelligences (MI). At least
by school-entry age, Gardner contends, children have acquired varying
proportions of 7 different forms of intelligence. He contends that each
child's mental aptitude thus consists of various degrees of native or
acquired abilities to manage:
1. language. Gardner calls this Linguistic intelligence that is necessary,
for example, for children to become novelists;
2. mathematics. Logical-Mathematical intelligence necessary, for example,
for children to become engineers;
3. color, line, shape, form, and space. Spatial intelligence necessary, for
example, for children to become graphic artists;
4. the human body. Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence necessary, for example,
for children to become athletes;
5. music. Musical intelligence necessary, for example, for children to play
musical instruments;
6. other people. Interpersonal intelligence necessary, for example, for
children to become administrators; and
7. his/her inner life (talents, interests, moods, intuitions, temperament,
etc.). Intrapersonal intelligence necessary, for example, for children to
become counselors, ministers, or entrepreneurs.
As noted, certain MI are said to dominate over others in a child's mental
makeup. Moreover, the relative degree of influence on children's thinking
imposed by various forms of MI supposedly is unalterable. Thus, learning to
read will be unpreventably difficult for children with low linguistic
intelligence, while by contrast very easy for those who possess a high
quantity of it. The extent to which children embody different MI thus
putatively predestines how difficult or facile it will be for them, for
example, to learn to spell, acquire mathematics knowledge, draw a picture,
kick a ball, play the piano, communicate their ideas to other students, and
to be self-judgmental.
In an interview with Time magazine (October 19, 1998), Gardner admitted that
he is "painfully aware" that so far no "convincing case" of an objective
nature has been made for the existence of MI. In that respect, no
standardized tests have been produced that substantiate their presence.
Moreover, it goes "against the grain of my philosophy" that any such tests of
MI be developed, Gardner submits. Inferences I make from experimental
research findings in neurology and cognitive science are ample proof that MI
exist, and exert the specific effects on children's learning that I
subjectively observe, he insists.
It is not surprising, therefore, that there is no direct experimental
evidence that attempts to apply the MI theory to reading teaching is a more
time-effective procedure than is nonMI instruction. However, despite the
experimentally undocumented nature of the MI supposition, published
assumption claims that children at school-entry age have inherited or
otherwise acquired, to varying degrees, over 20 unchangeable [Learning
Styles] LS. In this view, the reading teacher must match his/her
instruction to
each of these thousands of combinations of LS. That obviously is an
impossible
task, so it is held that children best learn to read by inferring what
they need to
know in order to do so simply "by reading." The empirically invalidated
Whole
Language approach to children's reading development, endorses that view,
i.e., that children must be largely empowered to teach themselves to read.
As noted, Gardner's opponent in the NY Times debate on reading instruction
was E. D. Hirsch. Since the advent of his 1987 book, Cultural Literacy What
Every American Needs to Know, Hirsch has become leader of a movement to
establish in schools a "core" curriculum made up of fundamental knowledge
that all students must be expected to acquire.
Hirsch's proposal in this regard contrasts with those of advocates of multicul
tural curricula. The latter emphasize minority group students' learning
details about their singular ethnic backgrounds. Hirsch's core curriculum,
to the contrary, consists of a planned progression of a wide band of
specified information in the academic fields of history, geography,
mathematics, science, language arts, and fine arts, as it is determined by a
consensus of opinion of scholars in these subject matters. Unless all
students have equal access to this intellectual heritage, the quality of
their future lives will be severely hampered, Hirsch warns.
In his NY Times remarks, Gardner appears at first-sight to agree with Hirsch
about the importance of students' acquisition of information in "the
scholarly disciplines." Gardner cautions that "our natural, common-sense
ways of making sense of the world" are not acceptable. Thus, students must
acquire reading skills necessary to gain the "information, data, facts."
Students must be involved in "focusing in depth on certain important topics,"
he concedes.
However, students "can have lots of facts" without having any
"understanding," Gardner goes on. The latter is identified "as a means of
finding a better answer to a consequential question," or to "apply knowledge
appropriately in a new situation." Once students experience this version of
understanding, "they will insist on commensurate understanding of other
topics in the future," Gardner maintains.
Current standardized achievement tests fail abjectly as measures of students'
understanding, Gardner further contends. They supposedly only "probe factual
or subject-matter knowledge." Instead, these tests should provide students
with requisite knowledge, and then have them apply it to solutions of
problems, he insists. A prime example would be for students to "create on
their own" Civil War documents, and then "assess" two accounts of the Civil
War. He leaves unexplained how such efforts could be measured objectively.
Gardner also clearly parts company with Hirsch as to whether there should be
a "preordained canon" of knowledge all students must acquire. "It simply
does not matter that much" which kinds of information students learn, Gardner
avers. In fact, he finds it "more important" that a student learns
information "valued by the community" in which he/she lives, than that of a
scientific nature. Moreover, Hirsch's core curriculum only focuses on
"factual answers" to questions, Gardner complains, while I focus "on
questions and ways of thinking."
Hirsch rejects Gardner's charge that core curriculum teaching ignores
"thinking" in favor of "facts." The latter is simply a necessary precursor
to the former, Hirsch explains.
He also criticizes Gardner as guilty of overlooking "the main cause of
inequality in American schools." This is "the dominance of the
progressive-education tradition," which has falsely posed "as the guardian of
social progress and democratic ideals." That socially destructive doctrine
has forced into schools the ineffective "whole-language method of teaching
reading," along with its rejection of "explicit teaching of phonics"
information, and its unwarranted defamation "of standardized tests" of
students' reading abilities, Hirsch notes. It promotes "thinking" about a
topic among students who know few, if any, facts about it.
Moreover, standardized reading tests (SRT) "are among the most valid and
reliable assessments that exist," Hirsch reacts. They "are among the most
important instruments for measuring excellence and fairness in education."
In addition, SRT "are highly correlated" with "real-world reading skills."
By contrast, he refers to the subjective manner in which students' efforts on
tests proposed by Gardner must be evaluated.
With a core curriculum in place, teaching can "reduce the advantages of
wealth and privilege" by narrowing the traditional achievement gap between
poor and affluent students by expecting the former to learn the same amount
of core information as the latter, Hirsch explains. The core curriculum thus
"is a potent way of fostering the egalitarian goal of democratic education."
It thus is clear to Hirsch that Gardner's contentions that it does not matter
how much poor children learn, and that what they do learn should reflect life
in their communities, "has consistently failed to benefit" these children.
Hirsch observes that Gardner's "ideas have done the most harm to the most
disadvantaged students," while purporting all the while to be designed for
their special benefit.
That fact is highly observable in the differences between poor and wealthy
children's competence in reading, Hirsch points out. Reading competence
"entails prior background knowledge over many different domains." Thus,
students' attainment of a "broad (reading) vocabulary" is the "index to broad
knowledge," which in turn "is the key to depth of knowledge and to a general
ability to learn new things."
Which participant in this debate over reading instruction wins? Readers of
it who believe that reading teaching must be based on relevant experimental
evidence doubtless will say Hirsch. On the other hand, his core curriculum
ideas are far less popular within the public school establishment than are
Gardner's unscientific views on MI, and how children should learn to read.
That is not a surprising finding since public school educators historically
have been notorious for their inability to withstand the lure of progressive
educational innovations. Educators appear to be constantly on the search for
a mystical panacea for nonsuccesses in teaching. The urges among these
educators that cause them to support experimentally indefensible Whole
Language (WL) reading teaching doubtless also lead them into acceptance
of Gardner's empirically undocumented, yet modernistic-sounding notions.
Educators also are swayed in this manner by the numerous complimentary
articles in educational journals on WL, MI, and LS. Only rarely, do these
journals
negatively critique these educational fancies.
Also, many educators harbor romantic and emotive feelings about their
avocation. They thus are highly sensitive as to whether their instruction is
humane, i.e., that it does not offend minority group children, nor the
freedom, dignity, and self-esteem of students in general. Gardner's views in
favor of limited learning of culture-based knowledge, and that some children
cannot learn to read well because they have low Linguistic intelligence, fit
nicely into that mind-set. It also protects educators from having to assume
responsibility for not using an effective method of reading instruction.
=====================================================================
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