The New Illiteracy by Charles J. Sykes

"I'm goin to has majik skates. Im goin to go to disenelan. Im goin to bin my mom and dad and brusr and sisd. We r go to se mickey mouse." [sic]

She was also appalled at the writing - again uncorrected - in her child's fourth-grade "journal." One entry read: "To day Dec. 9 1992 at 10:56 this was not planed to happen but it did a fire drill want off because in gym someone hit the fire dall and the glass borck. lot of fireman came to see wite happen. But they were vilinters fire man they smelled like smok but I get use to it the bell rann for a long time." [sic]

Another assignment asked children to discuss why, where, and how they would run away without their parents knowing it. The journal entry read:

I would run awar because my mom and Dad don't love me. I would run away with my brother to the musan in mlewky. We will use are backpacks and put all are close in it. We will take a lot of mony with us so we can go on the bus to the musam. We will stay there for a long time so my mom and dad will know they did not love us." [sic]

While Joan Wittig did not have a degree in education, she did have some college-level credits in education and "a background of training others to perform accurately and competently in my numerous job positions, beginning in my high school years." That experience was enough for her to sense something was wrong. She was not easily brushed off by assurances that her children were being taught "whole language skills" and that there was therefore no cause to be concerned. Instead, she decided to find out what the school district was really doing.

Administrators and "specialists" assured the parents that their children would learn spelling and grammar eventually. Their children's teachers were not being sloppy, they were practitioners of what they called "invented spelling," a more holistic approach to language.

Invented Spelling

The two mothers should not really have been surprised by their children's papers, since many educationists in charge of teaching reading and writing no longer believe that it is necessary to teach or to correct spelling.

Educationists noticed that many children misspelled words and realized that it would take a great deal of time, effort, and commitment to fix the problem. Instead, they discovered "invented spelling." Children weren't getting the words wrong, they were acting as "independent spellers," and any attempt to correct them would not only stifle their freedom, but smother their tender young creativity aborning. Such ideas have been widely seized upon by educationists who see the natural, unconscious, and effortless approach to spelling not only as progressive and child-centered, but a lot less work as well.

"Learning to spell," The University of Nevada at Reno's Sandra Wilde insists, "should ultimately be as natural, unconscious, effortless, and pleasant as learning to speak." The key words here are natural, unconscious, effortless, and pleasant. Wilde sees no difference between written and spoken language and ignores the necessary discipline that writing demands and speech does not.

Wilde and other theorists of "invented spelling" envision a new spelling curriculum that would shift from a "focus on error to a focus on creation." The idea is that kids should be free to misspell words - invent their own spelling - without having their spelling corrected or having the teacher tell them the correct spelling. This hands-off approach, we are assured, increases the writer's freedom and cuts down on frustration. This is far more enlightened, Wilde explains, than the "usual view of spelling as either right or wrong," an archaic conception that has been "replaced by a growing understanding of why children produced a particular spelling."

Under the new standards, children aren't expected to get it right, but merely to make "plausible representations of English words. " For example, Wilde explains that a student might write JREK to stand for the word conventionally rendered as drink. The invented spelling, she says, "is the result of three phenomena: knowledge that d occurring before r sounds like a j, an accurate perception of the word's vowel as sounding like the letter named e, and omission of a nasal sound before a consonant because it is not very salient phonetically."

Though her explanation describes why a child might think that JREK might mean "drink," it's a long stretch to say that therefore JREK should be an acceptable and plausible altemative - or that the "usual" view of spelling as "right or wrong" should be scrapped. That is no more plausible that taking a common misunderstanding or error in arithmetic and making it the basis of "invented math." The confusion is as fundamental as mistaking a diagnosis for a prescription. Learning how a child makes a mistake might be helpful in recognizing the source of the error, as a way of helping children to avoid repeating it - but using that mistake as the basis of transforming the math curriculum would be, well, a mistake. (As we'll see later, educationists have, in fact, applied the same logic to math as well as spelling.)

But Wilde holds out great promise for the new regime: "If children are encouraged to invent their own spellings in this way from the very beginning," she promises, "they will be independent spellers from the start. . . ." And eventually, students will get around in their own way and their own time to spelling words correctly, although Wilde is rather vague about her timetable. All she says is that the "ability to produce a perfectly spelled piece of writing without a teacher's help ... is certainly an appropriate goal for most students by the end of elementary school." In the meantime, the kids are on their own.

While the new apostles of invented spelling give lip service to making students "competent spellers," the emphasis of their literature is on the avoidance of the difficult, the reduction of stress, and on the creativity they insist will be unleashed if we just get over our hang-ups about i before e and cat instead of kat.

Wilde, for example, disdains spelling textbooks on the grounds that they are insufficiently humanistic and flexible, because they are so fixated on ... spelling. "Spelling textbooks," she sniffs, "do not, for the most part, see students as individuals. . . ." Teachers, on the other hand, are supposed to keep out of the way. "Teachers should rarely tell students how to spell a word, " writes Wilde. Kids are supposed to teach themselves: "As students sound out words, try different spellings to see how they look, discuss possible spellings with their peers, or check in reference books, they gain competence through acting independently. . . ." Wilde warns that teaching spelling can be actually harmful. "This creative intellectual process is short-circuited," she writes, "if the teacher provides spellings out of misplaced and premature concern for a correct final product."

There is, of course, considerable and growing evidence that all of this naturalistic self-teaching is not working out exactly as Wilde and her colleagues envision. Instead of embarking on a journey of self-discovery, children often pick up on the fact that since spelling is not counted, it must therefore be unimportant and irrelevant. The result is a generation of spellers who are undeniably independent in their approach to spelling, but seldom competent. A quick glance through student papers in high school and college is usually enough to disabuse all but the most committed educationist of the notion that spelling has improved. It is also enough to raise another question: Where is the creativity and stifled genius that should be breaking out all over now that the heavy hand of spelling has been lifted?

The fact is that American students are rotten spellers and their writing is often a grammatical embarrassment. While not admitting the role of educationism in the spread of this new illiteracy, Wilde does seem to acknowledge that the new curriculum is not going to create competent spellers after all. But the problem, she insists with educationist fervor, isn't with her curriculum - it's us. "For spelling curriculum and instruction to change in this country," Wilde exhorts the faithful, "beliefs and attitudes about spelling must change." Americans make way too much of good spelling. She complains that some people regard spelling words correctly as "almost a moral issue that is taken for more seriously than its educational importance warrants."

In fact, spelling words right is really only a "question of etiquette," Wilde argues. Employers and professors offended by bad spelling "feel this way not because they cannot understand what is being said or because the misspelling is a serious distraction but because they feel insulted by a writer who appears not to take the reader's sensibilities seriously enough. Such constant vigilance about spelling, including a perfectionism that bas filtered down even to the primary grades, must be relaxed if the students are to have enough breathing space to grow at their own pace in spelling." [emphasis added] Wilde obviously takes a rather expansive view of the breathing space people need if she is talking about college students and young adults who still haven't learned to spell. But her main point is that it is no big deal and neither the schools nor the poor spellers should be held accountable.

"Instead of one of the most important basics in education," Wilde argues, spelling "can really be better described as a detail." Her advice is that "everyone needs to relax a bit more about spelling." They are also relaxing a bit more about punctuation, grammar, and organization - all in the name of being holistic.

Holistic Literacy

The beauty of a holistic approach to writing is that it enables educators to change the rules of the game they have been losing. When the public began to notice the rapid decline in the reading and writing ability of American students, educationists responded with "holistic grading," which guaranteed that grades would rise without any improvement in writing. The National Council of Teachers of English was especially enthusiastic, offering workshops in holistic grading, which were aimed at getting rid of "trivia." "With this method," they declared, "the essay is read for a total impression of its quality rather than for such separate aspects of writing skill as organization, punctuation, diction, or spelling. [emphasis added]

"The method takes a positive approach to the rating of compositions by asking what the student has accomplished rather than on what the student has failed to do or has done badly." Textbook publishers quickly followed suit. A Macmillan/McGraw Hill Performance Assessment Handbook Guide for Reading/Language Arts Teachers, Grade 2 described the new "modified holistic scoring" as a method that "does not consider grammar, mechanics, and usage to any real extent. . . ."

This attitude has also been reflected in some state "assessments" of literacy. In Virginia, all students were expected to pass the so-called "Literacy Passport" before entering high school. First given in sixth grade, students were able to take it in subsequent years until they passed all three sections. The writing section was evaluated in five areas - composition, style, usage, sentence formation, and mechanics - and students could get up to four points in each area. But they were not all weighed equally. State educationists insisted that the scores for "composition" be multiplied by three and the score for "style" by two. In contrast, scores for sentence formation, usage, and mechanics were only multiplied by one. As one former middle-school teacher wrote in a letter to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the minimal weight attached to the mechanics of writing meant that "a student could receive a passing score without having to write complete sentences. Fragments and run-on sentences could dominate his sample. He would not need to concern himself with subject and verb agreement or with using words properly. His passing test could, in theory, contain no capitalization, punctuation, or proper spelling. Unbelievably, a student could receive a score of 1 (demonstrating little or no control) in the domains of Sentence Formation, Usage, and Mechanics, and still receive a passing grade. Together these domains make up only 3/8ths of the total score." She remarked: "Employers are not going to notice vivid vocabulary when the job applicant cannot spell or write complete sentences.

Redefining Literacy

Another response of educationists to the decline of literacy has been to simply change the definition of literacy. A literate person is no longer someone who has mastered the grammar, usage, and diction of language. In the early 1980s, a Minnesota school district defined the literate person as "one who has developed a feeling of self-worth and importance; respect for and appreciation and understanding of other people and cultures; and a desire for learning. The literate person is one who continues to seek knowledge, to increase personal skills and the quality of relations with others, and to fulfill individual potential." As Richard Mitchell noted, this definition effectively leaves out Aristotle (didn't appreciate barbarians); Kakfa (not into self-worth and self-importance); T. S. Eliot (undemocratic); and Norman Mailer (poor quality of relations with others) .

The school district where Joan Wittig and Beverly Jankowski sent their children took a similar tack by relabeling reading and writing as "communication arts," which were designed to "provide students with opportunities
to":

• Develop the appreciation and enjoyment of using language skillfully.
• Interrelate all language forms - reading, writing, listening, speaking - as a means of communication.
• Build life skills that will facilitate the fulfillment of career goals.
• Develop an understanding and competency in the use of technology (e.g. computers, audio-visual equipment, etc.) in communication arts. [emphasis added]

The goals statement's silence on grammar and spelling was not a casual omission. The specialists running the "communications arts" program had announced that they intended to phase out "traditional" spelling books over three years, as well as the "traditional use of grammar books." The specialists also had a distinctive attitude toward, other sorts of books.

Henceforth, books chosen for the "communication arts" programs would have to meet the following criteria: They must "follow the genre emphasized in the curriculum," must be "age appropriate; fit the students' interests; develop human awareness [as opposed to what?]; and develop multicultural, world awareness." None of the criteria mentioned whether the books would be any good.

When the mothers pressed the school on their children's progress, the specialists assured them that they must be allowed to work at their own pace and that they would eventually pick up the necessary mechanics along the way. But Beverly Jankowski's son was already in ninth grade and she saw few signs that he had ever gotten around to picking up basic skills, as she had been promised. instead, he was being assigned "cooperative writing projects," in which he and another student had to jointly produce an acceptable piece of writing.

In one assignment, her son and another high school freshman chose to write a letter of complaint. The first paragraph of the cooperative effort read:

Dear School Board:
We are writing in consern [sic] of an onfit [sic] phyical [sic] educational derictor [sic]. At New Berlin West High School we have landslids [sic] of problems, regarding [teacher's name]. The students and some faclty [sic] feel she unfit to teach a phy ed class. She contiuasly [sic] mock me, [student's name] and my assastare [student name]. etc.

Dear School Board:
We are writing in concern of [sic] an unfit Physical Education Director. At New Berlin West High School we have landslides of problems regaurding [sic] [teacher's name]. The students and most of the faculty agree that [she] is unfit, ugly, unknolegable [sic], underqualified and uncoordinated. This just covers the Us, we could go on forever.

In the second paragraph, the students wrote that "We have decided to tell you about one specific example that will prove how she mocks the students inteleigents [sic]." The teacher writes on the paper:

"Good idea to use a specific example."

For two years, Joan Wittig agonized before transferring her children from the public school in her community to private schools. After only a semester at the private schools, her children were writing and reading at a markedly higher level. Their papers were neatly written, grammatical, and their spelling was systematically corrected. Impressed by the improvement, she decided to take her story to her local school board. She brought along copies of her children's work (before and after their transfer to private schools). Along with other parents, she questioned the district's enthusiasm for "whole language," a teaching philosophy where children, Wittig said, are "encouraged to write and spell any way they want and the teacher does not correct the spelling so that the child's creativity is not stifled."

"Is this to be considered teaching?" she asked. "Is effective learning taking place?" She also wondered about the schools' emphasis on "cooperative learning," in which children worked in groups. "I sent my child to school to be taught by a teacher," she said, "not by another student."

"Lazy, poor students rely on the good students to do all the work," she told the board. "Good students are reinforced that they must do everything if it is to be done right." A local newspaper story recounted the reaction to Wittig's presentation: "Superintendent James Benfield said such criticism could make school employees feel they are doing something wrong. 'We should not have employees criticized until we change the guidelines."' if Wittig left the skirmish puzzled, she is not alone.

This shows, once again, how modern psychological theories and practices: 1) Redefine usual concepts and meaning (i.e. reading and writing now are called "communication skills") in a never-ending process of the alteration of value and importance, while adding further complexity and unworkability to a subject. 2) Concentrate on a less fundamental or basic aspect of some area and over-exagerrate it's importance to the detriment of actual basic things (i.e. concentrate on the child's self-esteem, creativity or appreciation as senior in importance, while neglecting basics such as common-sense notions of teaching reading and writing ability) Modern whacky psychological theories are riddled with this. It's not that the self-esteem, creativity or appreciation of the child isn't important, but they put the cart before the horse. If a student is sensibly taught to competently read and write, and to display his or her competence with reading and writing, he will, as a natural process, develop self-esteem. A child can be taught real skills in an interesting context which doesn't neglect the basics. But the modern "professionals" over-emphasis things such as appreciation and context while completely neglecting the basics. Said in another way, they introvert into minor things, presenting them as of major importance, with the result that actual basic skills are totally neglected - and the students fail to acquire basic skills of reading, writing and grammar. Simply, they fail to develop basic human skills necessary for competent communication. Words are symbols. They represent real things and relationships. The word car has an exact meaning. It is spelled an exact way. Modern educational psychologists have failed to figure out how to effectively teach these basics, and instead, possibly to cover their own severe inability, have come up with numerous theories and explanations which justify their own failures. Modern psychologists have the absurd notion that "forcing" children to conform to simple things like learning to read and spell harms their creativity and appreciation. Simply, they have failed to teach these things in a way which doesn't harm the student's creativity and appreciation - so they say that it's impossible to do. It's not impossible - but they say it is because it is impossible with their whacky theories and approaches to the subject. There is almost infinite room for creativity above and beyond a sensible structure of exact spelling and meaning of words. If everybody is free to choose any meaning and spelling they desire, then the entire process of communication breaks down. This is the actual result of their methods. There is nothing wrong with attempting to design study contexts with meaning to students and in a way where the students appreciate what they are learning. But to place these things in a position of greater importance than the actual acquisition of the skills of reading, writing, and studying is absurd. That hasn't stopped the entire field of modern psychology from promoting and enforcing these views on modern society. The results of their theories and practices have had and are continuing to have disastrous results on our children. This will have drastic results on the future society. The only solution is to get their influence out of the schools and out of the entire subject of education.

Get The Book!

Suggested Reading List - the Demise of the Educational System - OBE (Outcome-Based Education), NEA (National Education Association), educational psychology, German psychology & influences, demise of public education, educational sabotage, Wundt, Pavlov, Dewey, Skinner, Watson.

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