| Literacy
As Snake Oil: Beyond the Quick Fix
Edited by Joanne Larson
New York, Peter Lang, 2001
Review by Sydney Gurewitz
Clemens
My telephone is ringing
these days with teachers and caregivers wringing their virtual hands
over the new education bill that brings testing children's skills
to a new and fierce level and silences teachers (you cannot use
such-and-such a language in your classroom, you cannot use such-and-such
a book, you must do what everyone else is doing despite your best
judgment).
As if that would help the children,
the schools, or the families.
Joanne Larson has brought together a distinguished group of scholars
who write simply, clearly, and with precision about just what is
at stake in the Bush literacy boondoggle (otherwise known as "The
No Child Left Behind Act," a name stolen from Marian Wright
Edelman's Children's Defense Fund). James Paul Gee explains that
reading is complex, and identifies what will drop out with a simple
emphasis on phonics. Gerald Coles shows the lack of science in the
"scientifically based" instruction package we're being
sold. Patricia D. Irvine and Joanne Larson show us the discrimination
which is embedded in the commercial "literacy packages"
Lynn Asterita Gatto shows us how this plays out in a classroom with
living breathing children and teachers. Patrick Shannon unmasks
William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education and Drug Czar,
and now big wheel at the Heritage Foundation and author of much
which purports to teach values ... but not the values of justice
and wisdom. Kris D. Gutierrez looks closely at California's English-only
policies, and the costs to immigrant children and their teachers
of this oppressive legislation. And Brian O. Brent shows us how
penny-wise expenditure on literacy packages isn't a good bet.
Now, underlying all these writings (and they are accessible writings,
keeping the reader interested, learning, and outraged)
is the idea that writing isn't to be decoded, but to be considered,
that reading isn't mechanical but deeply critical, and that children
aren't to be manufactured but to be grown.
We needed this book. The publisher, Peter Lang, is to be congratulated
on putting it in our hands at this time.
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