By Anita Holten, Special Writer
Indianapolis Star, January 9, 2000

With the 2000 legislature around the corner, Gov. Frank O'Bannon sure could use some advice about improving reading in Indiana schools. If he called out to California, here's how the conversation might go:

Hello, is this Dr. Bill Honig, California's former state superintendent of schools?

Yes, can I help you?

I sure hope so. This is Gov. Frank O'Bannon of Indiana. We've got 27,000 children who barely passed or flunked their third-grade reading tests. We're developing a new multimillion-dollar reading assessment program to diagnose 92,000 first and second-graders. I heard California hit rock bottom in reading abilities nationwide. What happened and what are you doing to stop this?

Governor, we've had a reading earthquake here. The "fault" causing it is the ideology called whole language. Tremors and casualties still are coming in from this experiment some rightfully call malpractice. Our schools, myself included, promoted this death of reading and literacy. Whole language teaches kids to memorize whole words by size and shape using picture and sentence content to guess or predict unknown words, kind of like a frustrated detective. If anyone believes that's the way to teach children to read, they probably believe General Custer was a missionary to the Sioux Indians, too.

What happened next, Bill?

Well, Governor, heads rolled. The new state task force assessed the crisis. They said, "Dump this disastrous whole language training for teachers and in our elementary curriculum, or else." Superintendent Delaine Easton read the riot act to the publishers, demanding they publish the basics, meaning explicit systematic phonics, spelling and grammar, or lose their multi-million-dollar book market.

That's some story, Bill.

Listen, Governor, brain research has proven that talking is natural and reading isn't. We can surround kids with beautiful books, but they've got to be taught systematic reading skills of direct, explicit phonics. This teaches the sounds and letter relationships, blending them to form words. Eventually these skills become automatic in the reading process.

My advice, Governor, is learn from our mistakes. Investigate the teacher preparation courses in your universities. If that whole language junk science is promoted, get your legislators to pass laws requiring direct, explicit systematic phonics instead. Get your state superintendent involved to read the riot act on those whole language promoters of your reading earthquake. Clean house now if you want to be the "education governor." And who doesn't these days?

By the way, I heard about the new reading assessment program you're developing in the primary grades. I'd be cautious about that, if I were you.

Why, Bill?

To begin with, it's being developed by a past president of the International Reading Association, the most powerful lobby for the "look-say" method of instruction which encourages kids to learn whole words instead of individual sounds that make up words. Does that tell you something, Governor?

I remember Dr. John Silber, chancellor of Boston University, stating, "The International Reading Association, the professional organization of teachers of reading, holds the position that phonics and look-say are equally satisfactory methods for teaching reading. That is like saying radar and astrology are equally satisfactory techniques for promoting the weather."

Bill, I can't thank you enough. Could you recommend the top reading expert in the country? I'd like to connect.

Sure, Governor, that's Dr. G. Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. To learn more, visit www.readbygrade3.com or www.nrrf.org.

Now write this down. Every morning, with hands over their hearts, have your whole language teachers recite this pledge, written by G.K. Chesterton: "Insanity is repeating something that doesn't work and expecting different results."

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Anita Holten of South Bend is a retired first-grade teacher and director of the Indiana division of the National Right to Read Foundation.

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