Sixty years of language arts education: Looking back in order to look forward

Goodman, Yetta M. (2011). Sixty years of language arts education: Looking back in order to look forward. Language Arts, 101(1), 17-25.

The central thesis of this journey through the history of language arts education from the 1950s to the present is that the “pendulum” metaphor often used to describe the theoretical “swings” between behaviorist/transmission views of education and constructivist views of education is really not valid. With the perspective of 60 years of experience as a literacy educator, Goodman shows us that although one or the other of these two views has sometimes achieved more prominence than the other, both perspectives have continuously been influential. Over the timespan of her own career, both perspectives have been present, and have often been in conflict. That is still true today, and probably will be true for at least a long time in the future.

I appreciate the historical perspective that Goodman gives us here. I have met her, and have heard her speak on a number of occasions, and her passion clearly shines through, both when one hears her in person and in this account, written for a special issue of Language Arts celebrating the 100th birthday of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Goodman is over the age of 80 now, but there is no sign of any flagging of that passion. Here, Goodman gives us an important view of the history of NCTE, the history of literacy education, and the history of the whole language movement, with which she and her husband, Ken Goodman, will always be indelibly linked. It was interesting to read about the early roots of the whole language movement. Goodman’s “journey” almost exactly parallels the years of my own life. She was just beginning her career in the 1950s and 60s, the decades of my birth and childhood. She could have been one of my elementary teachers, had I grown up in a different place. Unfortunately, I did not; my teachers in small town Kansas mostly fit the “back to basics” mold, and Rudolph Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read had a devastating effect on me in my early years. Subjecting a child who read books fluently and with comprehension on her own by the age of three to mindless phonics drill sheets bordered on cruelty. I knew that even then, and fought back by deciding early on to disengage from school literacy. They might control me physically, but they could not control my thoughts! After being punished for reading books instead of finishing the worksheets, and for writing my own magazine instead of paying attention during phonics drill activities, I went underground, and learned to do the reading and writing I loved outside of school. At school I was known as bright but a daydreamer who did not pay attention in class, and ”did not perform up to her potential.” The only good part of it all was that these early experiences influenced me to go into education myself, and to embrace constructivist perspectives myself. My entire professional life has been about preventing what happened to me from happening to others.

Reading on into Goodman’s account of the 1970s and 1980s, I reach the point where I entered the profession, and the descriptions of the various debates begin to sound ever more familiar. The account traces the rise to prominence of the whole language movement to its peak in the early 1990s, and then traces the political changes, beginning in 1996 and continuing to today, that attempted to discredit the movement. Whole language has not disappeared, however. The debates will continue, and the influences of various viewpoints will wax and wane in their levels of influence. That is education, and education is always influenced by political climates, and political climates are ever-changing and often unpredictable. The important thing is that we as professionals continue to ask questions, and to be grounded and passionate about what we do, but also open to new ideas and perspectives as they emerge. Organizations such as NCTE are important vehicles for that kind of professionalism, as Goodman’s account clearly demonstrates.

I was thoroughly engaged with the article until the very end. At that point I encountered a sense of dissonance that I have sometimes encountered before when reading or listening to the viewpoints of educators who have been instrumental in developing the perspectives on both ends of the continuum, whether it is those on the constructivist side or those on the “transmission model” side. My dissonance comes when those on either side turn the debate in the direction of good versus evil. The “other” side becomes demonized, and whatever perspective the writer or speaker espouses is described in terms of being the “good” side. Some of this bias is certainly understandable, in light of the commitment and passion that some of these educators have given to the field of literacy education. If they had not been so firmly convinced they were right, they could not have accomplished so much! So I can understand and forgive some of the seeming bias. However, if we are to be true constructivists, we must be open to consider ALL viewpoints, even those that we vehemently disagree with. There are orthodoxies within all perspectives, and it is those orthodoxies that we must keep questioning, no matter what their theoretical roots are. All educational perspectives have their strengths, and all have their weaknesses, just as do all political perspectives, and because of that, their influences will wax and wane. The thing that matters for us as literacy educators is not to categorize perspectives as good or evil, but to keep on questioning and inquiring and sharing with each other as we continue to build on the rich history Goodman recounts for us here.