INDIANAPOLIS (Nov. 19, 1999) -- Republican gubernatorial candidate John Price said Thursday that, if elected, he would require all Indiana schools to use phonics to teach reading to young children.

Price, who is running against David McIntosh for the GOP nomination in 2000, said too many schoolchildren are not learning to read.

And Price's supporters said phonics, which emphasizes sounding out words and memorization of letter patterns, is a solution that has proven effective in some Indiana elementary schools.

But even legislators who have pushed for increased use of phonics in reading classrooms are wary about state government mandating curriculum to schools.

"There are times in life that you have to say we have a problem so expansive that you can't just say that over time people will see the light," Price said. "Children's lives are at stake here. If you had a disease putting children's lives at stake, you'd certainly do something."

About one-third of Indiana's third-grade students failed the language arts section of the ISTEP-Plus test last year. The reading scores have also gained attention from Gov. Frank O'Bannon and legislators in both parties.

A school superintendent and two teachers, who have taught colleagues how to use phonics to help youngsters overcome reading difficulties, joined Price to say the teaching method could help.

"Phonics is just the little building blocks of language," said Indianapolis Public Schools teacher Kathy Alfke, who said she has helped train every teacher at her elementary school to use the method with great success.

"It's just like numbers are to math," Alfke said.

Last year, California's state board of education mandated a return to phonics, shifting away from the whole language method, which Price said is the more common method taught to teachers at Indiana colleges and used in Indiana classrooms.

In whole language, students use entire words in context. In phonics, they are drilled in sounds of letters and groups of letters so they can sound out words. The two methods are hotly debated among education theorists.

An education committee of the General Assembly took up the issue this summer, hearing testimony from teaching experts about whether the state should enter the debate about reading instruction.

Sen. Murray Clark, R-Indianapolis, wrote a bill last year that would require Indiana's colleges to train teachers to use the phonics method.

But he said universities resist the legislature telling them how and what to teach. Clark had also considered Price's approach, but does not want to issue new mandates to local schools.

"I think we've already mandated teachers to death," Clark said.

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