Readers of a certain age may be familiar with the wonderfully clever line, “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”  Of course you can read it–you just did!!–which implied that you ought to be grateful for teachers.  Attributed to former President Harry S. Truman, the line is now associated with Teacher Appreciation Week, which began as Teacher Appreciation Day in 1953 with the strong support of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

But what about those who cannot read that line, or anything else, with confidence?  Who’s responsible? Whose fault is that? And what can be done to rescue them from the darkness of semi-literacy?

The number of non-readers in the USA is huge.  About 50% of living American adults read at or below a Sixth Grade level, and literally millions of Americans have lived and died as functional illiterates.  Scary headlines to the contrary, today’s students are performing slightly better, but even those who are reading above grade level–more than half of 4th graders–can read but don’t. Yes, they have TikTok, Instagram, and other social media at their disposal, but that doesn’t explain why they are seemingly uninterested in reading.   The numbers are daunting:  

1. Young people are reading less than half the number of books that older generations read;
2. Americans between the ages of 15 and 44 spend ten minutes or less a day reading books; and
3. More than half of adult Americans haven’t read a full book in over a year. 
4. The percentage of 13-year-olds who ‘never or hardly ever’ read for fun has increased dramatically, from 22 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2022.   

All of these non-readers, whether dead or alive, are victims of what are called “the Reading Wars,” an ongoing battle over the ‘right way’ to teach reading.  Like actual shooting wars, the Reading Wars are a stupid and dangerous waste of human potential.  

In a rational world, reading instruction is straightforward: children need to learn two important truths: 1) Letters and combinations of letters make sounds, technically called “Phonics and Phonemic Awareness;” and 2) The English language often violates the rules of Phonics, making it necessary for learners to recognize words that break the rules.  One quick example: by the rules of Phonics, ‘there,’ ‘where’ and  ‘here’ ought to rhyme, but they obviously do not, and so readers need to recognize words that don’t follow the rules. 

In sum, Phonics and Phonemic Awareness are the engine, and Word Recognition is the chassis.  Teaching both “sounds” (Phonics) and “shapes” (Word Recognition) is essential if one is going to be a competent, confident reader.

There’s one more important point: In a rational word, reading is recognized as the means to many desirable ends, such as navigating the world around you, or assembling a toy, or following a recipe, but, unfortunately, too many educators and politicians act as if reading were the goal, the end game–and something to be tested, over and over. 

Because rationality isn’t our strong suit, we’ve been fighting the Reading Wars for nearly 200 years.  Noah Webster, who gave us Webster’s Dictionary, believed that children needed to know that the 26 letters of the English language have sounds associated with them, and those sounds (44 in all) are determined by the combinations of the letters. To read individual words, first decode the sounds. That’s the gist of Phonics, the method supported by Webster, Dr. Rudolf Flesch in his 1955 bestseller, “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” Harvard’s Jeanne Chall in 1968, and the very popular “Science of Reading” movement today.  

On the other hand, Horace Mann, the founder of American public schools, rejected Phonics because of the frequent irregularities of the English language.  And irregular it is. By the rules of Phonics, anger, danger, and hanger ought to rhyme, as should good and mood.  It turns out that English breaks the rules of Phonics with depressing regularity.  To avoid confusing young readers, Mann and many others believed they must learn to recognize words.  Originally called ‘Look-Say,’ the approach morphed into Whole Language in the late 1970’s and later into Balanced Literacy. While these approaches  include some sounding out of words, their central thrust is learning what words look like and then inferring (and guessing) meanings based on context, including pictures. If you are of a certain age, the first books you read may have been “See Spot Run” and other word/picture books.

So, whose fault is that so many of us cannot read with confidence?  As it happens, the list of possible culprits begins–sadly–with the non-readers themselves and includes elementary school teachers, parents, the education professors who failed to train the teachers, ideologues crusading for their chosen way of teaching reading, test-crazed leaders, politicians looking to score points, and profiteers.

If students cannot read, it’s their fault:  NO, IT IS NOT!!  By all rights, teaching every First Grader to read with understanding ought to be a national priority.  Set the bar there, put the most competent teachers there, and then devote whatever resources are necessary to help children get where they want to be.  Sadly, we have not done that. Instead, even though 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children are ready to learn and eager to be challenged, we have actually lowered the bar.  For nearly 25 years, our stated national goal has been to have all children reading at “Grade Level” when they finish Third Grade. That’s a 2-year lowering of expectations. 

So, instead of harnessing the incredible curiosity and energy of our 6-year-olds, we said to them and their teachers, “No rush. Take your time.”   That goal was set during the Administration of George W. Bush, and—surprise!!–lowering expectations has not worked.  Reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)  have barely budged.  On NAEP’s 0-500 scale, Fourth Graders scored 217 in 1992, 220 in 2019, and–back to Square One–217 in 2022.  Eighth graders followed the same pattern: 260 in 1992, 263 in 2019, and–Square One again–260 in 2022.   Post-COVID, the average reading score for Fourth and Eighth graders decreased by 3 points. In 2022, fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores declined for most states/jurisdictions compared to 2019.

But rather than questioning the wisdom of the ‘low expectations’ policy, many politicians and policymakers are choosing to, in effect, “blame the victims” by requiring them to repeat Third grade. Currently, 18 states and the District of Columbia require retention for students reading below grade level at the end of 3rd grade. Another 7 states, including Texas, New Jersey and Maryland, allow but do not require retention. 

Does making poor readers repeat Third grade work?  It can, if the retention year includes lots of special attention.  More important than remediation, however, is serious attention to reading instruction in Kindergarten, First, and Second grades and to the retraining of elementary school teachers in reading instruction. Prevention works!  But retention without attention is more likely to doom those children to continued failure and eventual dropping out of school. 

The strongest evidence for ‘The Science of Reading’ comes from Mississippi, whose Fourth graders scored 199 (out of 500) on the 1992 NAEP test, 18 points below the national average. The state invested in pre-school and teacher training, and it required retention of third graders who read below grade level.  At one point, 9.6 percent of Third graders were being retained, but in 2019 Mississippi was the only state in the nation to post statistically significant gains on the Fourth grade NAEP test.  The so-called “Mississippi Miracle” has received significant praise, including this gushing piece from the New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff. Omitted from most coverage of Mississippi’s reading program, however, are the racial disparities; to wit, white Fourth graders score 25 points higher than Black Fourth graders, a discrepancy that mirrors the national gap. Shouldn’t a ‘miracle cure’ work for all children?  

The deep thinkers who now support retention began with a catchy–but misguided–slogan, “In the first three grades, children learn to read; from then on they read to learn.”  Treating reading as an end, instead of a means to an end, is dangerous nonsense, because children learn to read so they can understand the world around them. Full stop!  Imagine if those same deep thinkers were in charge of teaching children to walk.  They’d have kids walking in place for a year or two (learning to walk), after which they could walk around (walking to get somewhere). 

If children cannot read, it must be their parents’ fault: NO!  Perhaps you are wondering,“Why don’t all parents read to their kids? What’s wrong with them?”   Well, some parents simply don’t have the time; they are too stressed by their own challenges, perhaps holding down two jobs or working long hours at one job to make the rent and keep food on the table. Others never learned to read with confidence when they were in school, and some speak English poorly or not at all.  While their circumstances are different, most parents who do not read to their children share the belief that education is the ladder to a better life.  These parents hope–and expect–that their children will be taught to read, speak, and write English with fluency and confidence.

Sarah Part, a policy analyst at Advocates for Children, told The Gothamist that inadequate reading instruction actually widens the achievement gap. “Parents who have resources are going to find a tutor,” she said. “They’re going to get help outside of school. But families who don’t have resources …  are very, very dependent on what happens at school.” 

If students cannot read, it’s their teachers’ fault:  NO, NO, AND NO, because most elementary school teachers were not taught how to teach reading. The exceptional elementary school teachers I got to know when I was reporting learned how to teach reading on the job. For example, Rachel Hunt, a First Grade teacher at PS1 in The Bronx, NY, told me that her training program at the University of Connecticut never mentioned Phonics or Phonemic Awareness. When I checked the 2008 curriculum offerings at UCONN, I found no courses that concentrated on Phonics. Today, UCONN’s curriculum includes a course on ‘teaching reading and writing in the elementary school’ and another on ‘teaching language arts in the elementary school,’ bland descriptions which reveal nothing useful about content.

Katrina Kickbush, a special education teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, told me that she graduated from Drake University in 1992 with training only in Whole Language. “Ugh. What a mess. It was not until I taught at a school for students with learning disabilities that I was trained in Phonics, and it was life changing.”

Mark Gaither, who began his career teaching in a Baltimore elementary school, wrote, “I certainly started out in the Whole Language side of things. Quaker schools, Bank Street College of Education, friends at Teachers College. It was the way I, and many others, approached things. Eighteen years ago I was introduced to Direct Instruction, high level of structure, Phonics, and Phonemic Awareness. A lot of things fell into place.”  

Joanna Cohen went to Teachers College, part of Columbia University. “We had only two ‘literacy methods’ class sessions devoted to phonics instruction during a yearlong course. My takeaway was that phonics was not at all important for the teaching of reading.”

If students cannot read, it must be the fault of the education professors who trained the teachers:  YES, IT IS!!  Whole Language continues to dominate reading instruction in schools of education. A 2019 survey by the newspaper Education Week found that 72 percent of K-2 teachers use that method, which is no surprise because the majority of the education professors who trained them believe in Whole Language.  Education Week’s survey of “about 530 professors who teach early-reading courses found that 57 percent of professors ascribe to what’s known as a balanced literacy philosophy. Just 22 percent said their philosophy of teaching early reading centered on explicit, systematic Phonics with comprehension as a separate focus.”  Ed Week also found that two-thirds of education professors choose their own materials, and that their ‘Top Ten’ list of favorites was dominated by Whole Language believers.  That means that, even though most states have endorsed Phonics-based methods and even though many schools of education now claim to have incorporated Phonics into their teacher training, the same professors are doing the training. 

Research conducted by the right-leaning National Center on Teacher Quality is also depressing.  NCTQ surveyed nearly 700 teacher-training programs and concluded that only 25 percent of them were providing adequate training in the core components of scientifically based reading instruction, adding “perhaps more alarmingly, another 25% of programs do not adequately cover even a single component.”

If students cannot read, it’s the fault of the crusaders on both sides:  YES, IT IS!!  If Phonics had a Hall of Fame, its charter member would be Rudolf Flesch, who ignited the current Reading Wars with his full-throated attack on the ‘Look-Say’ approach to reading instruction, “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”  About 1930, Dr. Flesch told The New York Times, ”Our schools switched from teaching reading to teaching word-guessing, using the so-called look-and-say method rather than systematic Phonics.” Dr. Flesch maintained that all alphabetic languages except English are taught with systematic Phonics.  ”Why do we do it differently?”

The current commander of the Phonics army is probably Dr. Reid Lyon, the former Chief of Child Development and Behavior at the National Institute of Health (NIH), during the George W. Bush Administration.  

The charter members of a Word Recognition Hall of Fame would be Dr. Frank Smith (1928-2021) and the husband and wife team, Dr. Kenneth Goodman (1927-2020) and Dr. Yetta Goodman, the developers of Whole Language.  As Nicholas Lemann observed in The Atlantic in 1997, Ken Goodman and Frank Smith “present whole-language instruction as a joyful, humanistic, intellectually challenging alternative to deadening phoneme drills — one that turns the classroom from a factory floor into a nurturing environment in which children naturally blossom.”  

When I interviewed Dr. Yetta Goodman for NPR in 1979, she was scornful of the drill she associated with Phonics. “I’ve been in classrooms where kids spend all morning filling in blanks, matching letters and sounding out things. Reading becomes a luxury in a classroom like that. “You have free reading on Friday for an hour but only if you finish your work.”  And ‘work’ is focusing on those little bitty things that may have no meaning for children.’

Phonics, she suggested, treats reading as the goal instead of as the means to achieving goals. “There’s a function to reading. You want to read what’s significant for your own particular life’s purposes.  Then reading takes place. You learn to read by reading; you learn to write by writing. And there are some people who feel that you have to get ready for that by sort of having things checked off on a competency sheet, and there’s no evidence that having those things checked off is going to lead you to reading and writing. We have no evidence of that.  It leads you to doing better on a competency test, and I guess you have to decide what your goal is. Is your goal to develop people who can read and write, or people who can do well on competency tests? I don’t think you can do both.”

Nonsense, say the true believers in the Phonics camp, pointing to ‘invented spellings’ and guessing at meanings as proof that Whole Language is nothing but a romantic fantasy that fails to give children the skills they will need as adults–while at the same time lying to them by telling them that they can read.  For their part, Whole Language advocates caricature Phonics as an endless series of “cat-hat-rat-sat-bat” drills, an old-fashioned, cold, and boring approach that drives children away from literature.  

Each approach inspires devotion bordering on fanaticism….and the true believers have complete disdain for the other. In this, they resemble religious cults, not academics in search of truth.

The Reading Wars could and should have ended in 2000. In 1999 Congress had appointed a National Reading Panel of scholars to study the issue, and the 449-page report endorsed a balanced reading program that included but should not be dominated by systematic instruction in Phonics. “Phonics should not become the dominant component in a reading program, neither in the amount of time devoted to it nor in the significance attached,” the report concluded.  

However, the Bush Administration— specifically Reid Lyon, the Chief of Child Development and Behavior at the National Institute of Health (NIH)  and his colleagues— took charge of the Report’s summary–arguably the only section anyone reads.  Their “take no prisoners” summary sent a very different message: Phonics rules!  As David Waters noted, “the report’s 32-page summary, widely reported by the media and mailed to every school district in the country, focused on Phonics. It used the word ‘Phonics’ 89 times, and the word ‘balanced’ only once.”

The politicization of reading continued in President Bush’s signature legislation, the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2000.” It called for an emphasis on Phonics and ‘scientifically based reading research’ (a term found in the law and accompanying regulations more than 110 times). 

Today, under the banner of ‘The Science of Reading,’ Phonics has taken control. In recent years at least 29 states and the District of Columbia have passed “Science of Reading” laws or implemented new policies requiring ‘evidence-based reading instruction.’  

If students cannot read, it’s the fault of politicians seeking to undermine public education:   YES, IT IS!!  In our deeply divided country, public education is a favorite whipping boy for ambitious politicians like Governors Glenn Younkin of Virginia and Ron DeSantis of Florida, both of whom vigorously promote what they call “Parents’ Rights” and work to limit what can be taught in classrooms. Groups like “Moms for Liberty” organize slates to run for local school boards, often with remarkable success.   

Race and class prejudice may be factors as well, because failing to teach all children Phonics and Phonemic Awareness is most damaging to low income children, many of whom are also children of color.  Here’s why: children from upper middle class families, whatever their race, are likely to arrive in Kindergarten or First Grade with the reading ‘engine’ in place, because they were born into families that value literacy and have parents who have been reading to them for years.  

However, children arriving in school without the ‘engine’ of Phonics who are then taught the Whole Language method may never become competent, confident readers. As they fall behind, they are likely to be diagnosed as ‘special needs’ students, further lowering their chances of success.  It is as simple as that, sadly.

If students aren’t reading, excessive testing is to blame: YES, in the opinion of some teachers I’ve met.  Here’s one quick story: In June, 2011,I took over two First Grade classrooms at PS 1 in the Bronx, NY, a low income school where only 18 percent of Fourth Graders were reading at grade level. In both First Grade classes, I wrote some nonsense on the blackboard–“The blue pancake went swimming and ate a frog”–which the children read with confidence, competence, and joy.  Why, if PS 1’s First Graders were reading with confidence, did the Fourth Graders do so poorly on the state reading test? I asked Brenda Cartenga, a Fourth Grade teacher. Too much testing, she said. “The system takes the fun out of reading.”

What’s going on here, and in most school systems, is a fundamental misunderstanding of reading. It is NOT the goal but the means to many ends that children care about, beginning with control of their environment.  Children want to read for the same reasons they want to walk. Testing, and teaching to the reading test, kills the desire to read. That’s why, as noted earlier, even children who can read aren’t.

If students cannot read, follow the money:  YES!!  While the Reading Wars are fought by armies of ideologues, one only has to follow the money to discover that reading instruction is big business.  Significant profits flow to the purveyors of the chosen approach through the sales of textbooks, curriculum materials, and (especially) grade-level reading series. In her podcast series, journalist Emily Hanford reported that Heinemann, a publishing company that sells Whole Language and Balanced Literacy reading series and curriculum materials, has made hundreds of millions of dollars doing business with local school boards. As she reported, “Gwinnett County Schools in Georgia, they spent $14 million. Baltimore County in Maryland, $11 million. Chicago, $11 million. Palm Beach County Schools, down in Florida, $9 million. The New York City schools spent $21 million on Heinemann products.”  She notes Heinemann’s three top authors, Lucy Calkins, Gay Su Pinnell, and Irene Fountas, are now multi-millionaires.  When I reported on reading instruction for the PBS NewsHour in May, 2014, approximately 15 percent of US schools were using Dr. Calkins’ Balanced Literacy and its 26 levels of ‘just right’ books, at a cost of roughly $300 per student. 

Focusing on Phonics is also profitable.  When California abandoned its 10-year embrace of Whole Language in favor of Phonics in 1998, it not only whiplashed its elementary school teachers; it also created a veritable gold rush, as the Los Angeles Times reported, because California set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to equip classrooms with new textbooks and retrain teachers.  Today school districts are being urged to purchase ‘Phonics kits,’ which seem to guarantee that everyone will master the critical skills with ease.  So, yes, greed has played a big role in our reading crisis.

What’s To Be Done:  Embracing “The Science of Reading,” as most states are doing, does tamp down the Reading Wars, but that alone will not solve the problem.  Children have an absolute right to read, and they are entitled to be taught by well-trained professionals.  As Bill Clinton said in 1994, “Literacy is not a luxury, it is a right and a responsibility. If our world is to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century we must harness the energy and creativity of all our citizens.” 

To achieve that goal, public policy should turn its attention to making things right.  Children and teachers are the casualties here. Classroom teachers were victimized by inadequate professional training, because almost all their education professors taught them to use the Whole Language approach, full stop. 

Let’s hold the guilty people and institutions responsible: the teacher-training institutions that dismiss Phonics, the ideologues in both camps, the anti-public education politicians, test-crazed leaders, and the profiteering people and businesses who treat children as pawns. 

Public education is supposed to be a ladder to a better life, one that children can climb, rung by rung, on their way out and up. Continuing with either Whole Language or Phonics is akin to removing the bottom rungs of that ladder, because teaching children to read is not an “either-or” matter. Phonics-based instruction that includes elements of word recognition and contextual understanding (i.e. Whole Language), when led by a talented teacher, is enjoyable and challenging.  In sharp contrast, either approach on its own– pure Phonics or Whole Language–is boring and counter-productive.  

The long term solution requires major changes in pre- and in-service teacher education and the removal of financial incentives that now support the Whole Language model.  

In the short term, we need to retrain elementary school teachers so they can be successful.  To make that possible, President Biden should ask the House and Senate to pass “The Right to Read Act,” which would provide block grants to all US States and territories for the retraining of Kindergarten, First, Second and Third Grade teachers in Phonics and Phonemic Awareness, in the importance of Word Recognition, and in the art of teaching those skills in ways that engage students.  Ideally, this Bill would also provide funds for literacy training for any adults seeking to learn to read with confidence.

These paid summer workshops should also be open to teachers in other grades, including Middle and High School teachers, so that all educators are equipped to help struggling readers. 

Retraining several hundred thousand teachers will take time, skill, and patience; after all, we’re asking them to unlearn and abandon habits and patterns, and then relearn a new way of teaching reading.  Imagine asking a saxophonist to play the violin, or a soccer player to play point guard on a basketball team. Those are comparable challenges.  

However, not retraining teachers would inevitably mean a reliance on scripted Phonics drill, often on screens.  Pre-packaged ‘Phonics Kits’ seem to me to be a sure-fire recipe for turning kids away from reading.

For its part, the US Department of Education should fund and make available videos of a dozen or so outstanding teachers at work. In these videos, we should see effective teaching and also hear the teachers explain what they are doing, and why.

And bear in mind, good teaching is more art than science. It cannot be programmed into a machine or taught straight out of a textbook. So, please, let buyers beware of snake oil salesmen peddling Phonics schemes ‘guaranteeing’ that teachers and students will master Phonics in a week or two. 

Never forget that reading with confidence is neither a goal nor an end in itself. It is a means to an infinite number of ends—following recipes, assembling a toy or an outdoor grill,delving into history and biography, and being transported into fictional worlds, etc, etc.  

This is a national crisis, which means we cannot continue teaching reading the way we do.  Embracing both Phonics and Word Recognition as the best way to teach children to read may well be the civil rights issue of our time.  If we truly want our public schools to be a ladder up and a pathway to success for anyone who’s willing to work hard, we must end the Reading Wars now!

The good news is that my birthday ride was a success; the bad news is that I got scammed–again!

First the ride: A perfect day, I was on the road at 5AM, and the only living things I encountered for the first 90 minutes or so were some wild turkeys.  I was half-way to 82 miles, my goal, by 8, when I returned home for a nice breakfast.  Joan joined me for miles 72-82, and then I tacked on a few more.

The bad news is pretty embarrassing.  I mentioned previously that someone from YouTube had called me to say that its dedicated channel would be tracking my progress, and that all I had to do was activate the link, using the Go-Pro like device on a special helmet (which I had to purchase), making sure to point the laser directly upward. So I bought the special helmet.

Then, at about 5:15AM I pushed all the right buttons on the device, but all I got was ‘ERROR MESSAGE.’  Then a few minutes later I received this very disturbing text message:

I’m beginning to suspect that the same person who hoodwinked me last year about coverage on ESPN also conned me about my ride being live-streamed on YouTube this time around. 

My trust and my confidence in humanity’s basic goodness are shattered. In fact, I am now questioning whether ABBA, the Annual Birthday Bikers Association, is real.  Maybe that’s also part of the scam?

Because I was told that its headquarters were in Stockholm, I’ve been in touch with the local Chamber of Commerce and the Tourist Center there, and everyone has told me that ABBA is a world-famous musical group, not a biking group.  I guess I haven’t been paying attention to popular culture.

I think I probably should stop payment on that $1000 check I sent ABBA for a lifetime membership. What do you think?

But there is a rainbow, a silver lining to this sad story: My accountant told me that, if enough of you donate to World Central Kitchen, then I can legitimately write off the cost of that very expensive Go-Pro type helmet/headset that I purchased in anticipation of being on YouTube.

Of course, World Central Kitchen is worth donating to anyway, and perhaps you have already done so. But if enough of you donate, that will also bail me out financially, because that stupid (and useless) helmet/headset certainly wasn’t cheap.

Here’s how to donate to World Central Kitchen, and thanks.

In a few days, Lord willing, I will turn 82, and that means it’s time for another attempt at biking my age.  I began this exercise in putting off the inevitable in 2011, the year I turned 70. I’ve achieved my goal for 12 consecutive years, but the distance increases every year and I get a year older, so, as those financial ads warn, please remember that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

As I have in the past, I’m asking you to dig deep for a preferred good cause, which this year is World Central Kitchen, the remarkable charity founded in 2010 by Chef José Andres. WKC, a non-profit, is first to the frontlines–whether it’s Ukraine or countries like Haiti devastated by a natural disaster. WKC provides fresh meals in response to crises, while simultaneously working to build resilient food systems with locally-led solutions.  WKC has served more than 250 million nourishing meals around the world. Charity Navigator makes it clear that 100% of your gift, which is 100% tax-deductible, will help WKC provide more meals to those in need.

Here’s an easy way to donate $820, or $82, or $8.20 to World Central Kitchen. Thank you.

While I have your attention, I want to apologize to everyone who tried last year to follow my progress on ESPN’s “Older Amateur Athletes” channel, which is either 1467, 2156, or 2310 on many cable systems.  I had been assured by someone I reached at the Annual Birthday Bikers Association (known as ABBA and based in Stockholm) that a camera crew would be on hand to cover my attempt. I wish I had gotten his name.  What I did not realize was that ESPN’s bean-counters decided which aging athlete to focus on based on the cost of production, and it would have cost a pretty penny to have a camera crew following me for 81 miles.  I learned later that, instead of covering my ride, the “Older Amateur Athletes” channel devoted four hours of airtime to a woman in California who was attempting to set a new Guiness Book of World Records standard for “most consecutive hours playing the accordion while rocking in a rocking chair.” That was humiliating, to put it mildly.

But things look better this year because there’s a new game in town. YouTube, bless their hearts, has decided to target ‘the senior demographic’ and is using drones to cover athletic endeavors like mine, which it then streams live.  The person I talked to at YouTube told me that I needed to purchase a special Go-Pro-type headset that beams its signal skyward to connect with the drones, which will then find me on the ground and track my progress.  Of course, I’ve ordered the headset, but I wish I had gotten the name of the person I talked with at YouTube central headquarters so I could let the folks there know that I’m ready.  It weighs close to two pounds, unfortunately, and that could make the ride difficult.

But that’s my problem, not yours.  Please donate generously to World Central Kitchen. 

I’ll let you know how the ride turns out.

“Out of Many, One” was the motto of the United States from 1782 until 1956, when it was replaced by “In God We Trust.” Even now, the Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, can be found on our $1 bills in the banner held by the eagle, on some of our coins, and on the flags and seals of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.   

Always aspirational, “Out of Many, One” was meant to signal to the world that the original 13 colonies were united.  Which they were in 1782 when faced with a common enemy, England.  

But they were clearly not united regarding slavery.  Pennsylvania outlawed the practice of owning other human beings in 1780, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1783, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784.  Vermont, not one of the original 13 British colonies because it had declared independence from Britain earlier, actually abolished slavery in 1777.

Slavery, America’s original sin, bitterly divided the new country and led to our Civil War, making “E Pluribus Unum” a hopeless cause.  In 1956, threatened by the specter of ‘Godless Communism,’ Congress dumped “E Pluribus Unum” and changed our motto to “In God We Trust.”  For good measure, it added the phrase “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Those changes in the 1950’s were cosmetic, but Congress has tried to bring us together, most notably with the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, which Congress ratified in 1868 (along with the 13th and 15th Amendments).  The 14th Amendment provides for ‘equal protection under the law’ and prohibits states from taking away fundamental rights–which Southern white politicians were busy trying to do (and which an earlier Supreme Court decision, Scott v. Sanford, allowed!)

In Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), the Supreme Court held that African Americans were not U.S. citizens, even if they were free.

The Fourteenth Amendment, however, guaranteed that everyone born or naturalized in the United States and under its jurisdiction would be a United States citizen. It also ensured that federal citizenship was also made primary, which meant that states could not prevent freed slaves from obtaining state citizenship and thus federal citizenship. As such, the Fourteenth Amendment effectively overturned Sanford v. Scott.

In simplest terms, the federal government always has a vested interest in Unum, while the States always lean toward Pluribus. That fundamental tension is built into our Constitution, which declares that any and all rights and powers not specifically enumerated as belonging to the central government therefore belong to the states. 

Education is a good example of the federal/state tension.  Because ‘education’ does not appear in the Constitution, that was reason enough for the US Supreme Court to rule (5-4) in 1973 that American citizens do not have a fundamental constitutional right to an education. Education, the court said, was up to individual states. 

End of story?

Well, No, it wasn’t, because the White House and the Congress, particularly when controlled by Democrats, wanted to improve the life circumstances of children and families living in poverty. Better schools, they felt, were the safest and least controversial way to do that. (Housing, health care, a guaranteed living wage, et cetera, were either too difficult or impossible.)

In 1979 President Jimmy Carter and Democrats in Congress created a Cabinet-level Department of Education, which Republicans have campaigned against ever since.  Ironically, however, it was a Republican President who went ‘a bridge too far’ for many American parents.  George W. Bush, former governor of Texas, worked with Democrats in Congress to create “No Child Left Behind.” Its  onerous rules and harsh penalties applied to virtually every US public school and led to a massive increase in machine-scored standardized testing in English and math…and the disappearance of art, music, physical education, and recess, as well as widespread cheating by adults whose jobs depended on higher test scores.

If “No Child Left Behind” got the camel’s nose into the tent, the Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” put the entire camel squarely inside the structure.  In 2009, ‘the Great Recession’ prompted Congress to give Education Secretary Arne Duncan $4.35 billion in discretionary money, which was more money than all other Education Secretaries combined.  Congress did not earmark the money but left it to Duncan to decide how to distribute it.  Suddenly, Duncan had the power to make states–desperate for dollars–do whatever he and his advisors wanted them to do.  

As some noted at the time, Arne Duncan had declared himself the country’s de facto School Superintendent.  

He established four criteria, but for many in the states, the actual criteria weren’t the point. This was federal overreach, a usurpation of states’ rights.  And as soon as it could, a Republican Congress changed the rules, writing laws and regulations that hamstrung Duncan’s successors.  Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, did not have the authority to do much, although she pushed hard for programs like vouchers and charter schools that take away resources from traditional public schools.  President Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, has all but disappeared from the political scene, leaving education to the states.

And states are stepping up their push for power, not just in education but in virtually every way possible, including voting, health care, and a woman’s right to choose. I urge you to read Jamelle Bouie’s brilliant piece in the New York Times, which makes it clear that we are further away than ever from “E Pluribus Unum.”

But we cannot give up on national unity. 

Clearly, no single step or action would bring us together, but what if you had the opportunity to try to move us toward national unity?  Suppose you had the power to take that all-important first step toward bringing us together?  

What would you call for:  Mandatory Voting?  An inspirational and charismatic President?  Mandatory National Service for all?  A common enemy like Russia or China? A more equitable tax system? Or something else?

What do you think would have the best chance of healing our country, and why?

A few weeks ago in this space I rewrote Pastor Martin  Neimoeller’s “First they came for….” in an effort to sound the alarm about the increasingly strident hate campaign(s) being waged against transgender kids…and, by extension, all LBGTQ individuals and, eventually, everyone who dares to be even slightly different.  The pastor was warning about the rise of Naziism in Germany before World War II.  That’s what’s happening here, now.

The hate and hysteria are spreading, and the attacks are growing more vicious: The Republican-controlled legislatures of Montana and Kansas, the Governor of Oklahoma, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and that state’s legislature…this list goes on and on.

It’s time to fight back. It’s time to organize.  I’m starting a national organization of straight people (and anyone else who is concerned) who are willing to stand up to these power-hungry men and women.  I’m calling it “FRIENDS OF GAYS, UNITED.”

The acronym is “FOG-U”@ 

(Alternatively, the group could be named “Friends of Queers, United,” or FOQ-U. Your decision.)

(My hope is that members of FOG–U will show up in significant numbers at rallies of people like DeSantis and shout out, “We are Friends of Gays, United.  Governor DeSantis, FOG-U”

Or, “Hey, Montana Republicans, FOG-U” 

Or, “Speaker McCarthy, FOG-U”

But a warning is in order.  Please pronounce FOG-U very, very carefully, or else it might sound like a socially unacceptable slur which my own sense of propriety prevents me from writing.  We would not want our intentions to be misunderstood.

Please join FOG-U…..or start your own local chapter.  T-shirts and ball caps are being designed as we speak.

Seriously, do not remain silent……

Learning the alphabet is a straightforward 2-step process: Shapes and Sounds.  One must learn to recognize the shapes of the 26 letters and what each letter sounds like.  There’s no argument about this, and certainly there has never been and never will be an “Alphabet War.” 

The same rule–Shapes and Sounds–applies to reading. Would-be readers must apply what they learned about Sounds–formally called Phonics and Phonemic Awareness–to combinations of letters–i.e., words.  They must also learn to recognize some words by their Shapes, because many English words do not follow the rules of Phonics. (One quick example: By the rules of Phonics, ‘Here’ and ‘There’ should rhyme; they do not, and readers must learn how to pronounce both.)  To become a competent, confident reader, one must rely on both Phonics and Word Recognition. 

Ergo, there’s absolutely no need, justification, or excuse for “Reading Wars” between Phonics and Word Recognition. None!  And yet American educators, policy-makers, and politicians have been waging their “Reading Crusades” for close to 200 years.  As a consequence, uncounted millions of adults have lived their lives in the darkness of functional illiteracy and semi-literacy.

Here’s something most  Reading Crusaders don’t understand: Almost without exception, every first grader wants to be able to read, because they understand that reading gives them some measure of control over their world, in the same way walking does.  And skilled teachers can teach almost all children–including the 5-20 percent who are dyslexic–to become confident readers.

Skilled teachers understand what the Reading Crusaders do not: Reading–again like walking–is not the goal. It’s the means to understanding, confidence, and control.  Children don’t “first learn to read and then read to learn,” as some pedants maintain. That’s a false dichotomy: they learn to read to learn.   And so skilled teachers use whatever strategies are called for: Phonics, Word Recognition, what one might call Reading as Liberation, and more. 

See for yourself how reading is taught:  Imagine that you’re sitting in the back of a classroom of First Graders, most of them 6-years-old, a few of them age 5. It’s early October, and the students already know their letters and the sounds they make.  First the teacher holds up what looks like a Stop Sign.  

Teacher: Children, what does this sign say?

Many hands go up, and a lot of the kids call out “Stop” and “It says Stop” and “That’s a Stop sign.”

“Maybe you recognized the sign because you’ve seen it on lots of street corners, but let’s read what this sign actually says. First, let’s take it apart, letter by letter.  The first letter, T, makes a sound.  What sound does T make?” 

The teacher then goes through the sounds the other three letters make, the children make the sounds and put them together, laughing when they realize their mistake.

Then she holds up a slightly different sign for her students to decode:   (this sign reads SPOT, but I am flummoxed by pasting graphics. Sorry)                                                                

They do, with increasing confidence because they’re enjoying the game the teacher is playing.

“OK, now let’s see what happens if we move the letters around again.” 

She holds up another sign:  (this one reads POST)

“Same four letters.  Let’s try to read it by sounding out each letter. Start with the first one.  What sound does P make?”

After they’ve decoded and pronounced POST, they are delighted when she brings out two more versions of the familiar sign:   

They take those words apart, then put the sounds together, eventually reading both words.  OPTS is the most challenging because the First Graders don’t know the word, leading to a discussion about OPTIONS, a noun, and OPT, a verb.  The teacher doesn’t move on until she’s sure everyone understands. Then she challenges her students to use those words in conversation during the day, or at  home that night. 

Finally, the real thing, which they decode with ease:

And for one more challenge, she holds up this sign,  STOP but with an E at the end. 

She tells them how it is pronounced and explains that, when the letter E follows a vowel, that vowel ‘says its own name.’  She tells them how to pronounce it, and then she writes several words on the blackboard: NICE, HOSE, and CASE.  The children sound them out. 

Then she holds up another image, a GO sign:  

“Who knows what this sign says?  Can anyone use it in a sentence?” (Many hands go up.)  “That’s good.”

After sounding out the two letters and putting the word together, the teacher asks the children, “What happens to GO if we replace the G with S or N?”

She writes SO and NO on the blackboard, next to GO, which the children figure out almost immediately.  

“But letters can be tricky things, children. What sound does ‘O’ make in STOP? Keep that in mind.”

She replaces the G with the letter T, making TO .  Some students automatically rhyme it with GO and SO, pronouncing it ‘TOE.’  Now she explains that in this new word, TO, the letter O has a different sound.  

“So we see that the letter O can make different sounds. English is tricky, but we will learn all the tricks.  Read this sentence: ‘SO I said NO, you must GO TO the STORE.’

Which word isn’t following the rules?”

They all seem to understand that TO is the exception.

“I warned you that letters were tricky!  But there are ways to figure out most letters, rules that work most of the time.  But not all the time, because English breaks a lot of its own rules.  I promise you we will have fun figuring all this out…”

The teacher is incorporating Word Recognition– often called “Look-Say” or Whole Language–techniques into her reading instruction. Because English is often non-phonetic, readers must learn to recognize quite a few words, as she is explaining to her First Graders.

Another time she writes two short sentences on the blackboard: COME HERE!  WHERE ARE THE MACHINES?

“OK, kids. On your toes now, because only one of these words follows the rules.”

She asks them to pronounce each word according to the rules they have learned. They do, pronouncing COME with a long O, WHERE with a long E, ARE with a long A, and MACHINES with a long I.  Then she pronounces them correctly, mystifying and delighting her students. 

“I told you English was tricky and sneaky, but we won’t let it beat us!”

She creates a list of other rule-breaking words to learn.These so-called ‘sight words’ include who, where, to, are, been, because, machine, and police.  The list will grow throughout the year.

She often asks her students to tell the class what words they want to be able to read.  Hands go up, and children call out,  ‘Bathroom,’ ‘Girl’s Room,’  ‘Boy’s Room,’ ‘Ice Cream,’ ‘Police,’ ‘Rocket Ship,’ and more.  By meeting them where they are and encouraging their curiosity, she’s empowering them.  

Another time she will ask her students what sentences they would like to write. “I love you, Momma” and “I miss you, Daddy. Please come home,” some call out. She writes the sentences on the board for everyone to read. 

Neither Phonics nor Word Recognition, this strategy is closer to the “Literacy as Liberation” practiced by Brazilian educator Paolo Friere.  Whatever the source, it’s a powerful motivation for young children, giving a strong sense of mastery.

When the year is nearly over, she will ask her children some questions: ‘Who are the three or four fastest runners in the class?’   The children call out five or six different names.  ‘OK, now who are the three or four best singers in the class?’ Again names are called out.  ‘And one more question. Who are the three or four tallest kids in our class?’  More names.

“I asked those questions because some of you are taller, some of you can run faster, and some of you can sing better, but that’s just how things are turning out. It’s not because you are better. You’re just different.  The same thing is true with reading. All of you are readers, good readers, but some of you can read better….because you got lucky at birth, not because you are a better person.”  

She is correct.  It turns out about 40 percent of young children absorb the basics of Phonics without difficulty and are able to decode and comprehend with ease.  But everyone–even ‘born readers–has to learn to read because reading is not a natural act. 

“You’re all readers now, and nobody can take that away from you….ever.  So please keep on reading, and writing, and thinking, and asking questions.” 

Full disclosure: That teacher isn’t one person but a mashup of marvelous First Grade teachers I encountered as an education reporter, all but one of them women.  Among the women was my own First Grade teacher, Mrs. Catherine Peterson at Hindley School in Noroton, Connecticut.  I went back and spent a day with Mrs. Peterson when I was in my late 30’s and working for NPR.   The man was Johnny Brinson, a First Grade teacher in Washington, DC.  Like all great teachers, they made reading a challenging game, and then did everything possible to see that their students ‘won’ the game.

Tragically, the Reading Crusades continue, with one faction now claiming victory under the banner of ‘The Science of Reading.’  But that’s a story for another column.

If you’re at all like me, you’re curious about Artificial Intelligence and new applications like ChatGPT and Bard.  The brilliant Thomas Friedman of the New York Times says the world will never be the same again, but my interest is narrower: If students can simply ask Bard or ChatGPT to write their papers for them, how can teachers prevent this?  

(Spoiler alert: Teachers can win this struggle!)

So, naturally, I turned to Bard, which told me (within seconds) that, while it can help students generate ideas, do research, improve their writing, and learn about different writing genres, it’s not supposed to be a substitute for original research and writing.  Then it warned me to “Monitor students’ use of Bard to make sure that they are not plagiarizing or engaging in other forms of academic misconduct.”

Yeah, right. If I’m teaching English in a public high school, I probably have between 100 and 125 students!  There aren’t enough hours in the day….

Second question: Can Bard help identify cheaters and plagiarists?  Within seconds, I received an answer: 

“There are a few things you can look for to tell the difference between original writing and prose provided by Bard.

• Original writing is typically more creative and original than prose provided by Bard. Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text, so it can be very good at generating text that is grammatically correct and factually accurate. However, it is not always able to generate text that is creative or original.
• Original writing is typically more personal and engaging than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a machine learning model, so it does not have the same level of understanding of human emotions and experiences as a human writer. As a result, its writing can  be dry and impersonal.
• Original writing is typically more nuanced and complex than prose provided by Bard. Bard is a large language model, but it is still under development. As a result, it can sometimes struggle to understand the nuances of human language. This can lead to writing that is simplistic or even nonsensical.

……

• Ask yourself if the writing sounds like it was written by a human. Bard-generated text can sometimes sound robotic or unnatural. Original writing should sound like it was written by a human.

To put this the test, I gave Bard the following task:

I am one of six children, the second oldest and the first-born son. We grew up on a small farm with chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I’m now 81. Please write a short memoir of no more than 200 words about my childhood.

Within seconds, Bard spit out this:

“I was born in 1942, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in the Midwest. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories.

Now that I am 81 years old, I still look back on my childhood with fondness. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

Boring, and also wrong, and so I responded:

This is inaccurate. I was born in 1941, and our farm was in Connecticut. Worse, however, it does not capture either the small pleasures of collecting the eggs every morning or learning to milk cows, and it also does not capture the deep pain of watching a pig or steer that I raised being slaughtered.  Please rewrite.

In just a few seconds, Bard responded by adding a few paragraphs, highlighted below to make it easier for you to read:  “Sure, here is a more accurate and detailed memoir:

I was born in 1941, the second oldest of six children. We grew up on a small farm in Connecticut. My father worked hard to provide for our family, and my mother took care of the house and the children. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy.

I loved growing up on the farm. I spent my days playing with my siblings, helping my father with the chores, and exploring the woods behind our house. We had chickens, a few cows, a few pigs, and one goat. I loved taking care of the animals, and I learned a lot about hard work and responsibility.

I also learned a lot about nature on the farm. I spent hours watching the birds and the animals, and I learned to identify all the different plants. I loved being surrounded by nature, and it helped me to appreciate the beauty of the world.

One of my favorite things to do was collect the eggs every morning. I would wake up early and go to the chicken coop, where I would find a dozen or so eggs waiting for me. I would carefully collect the eggs and put them in a basket, then bring them back to the house. My mother would use the eggs to make breakfast, and I would always get to eat one of the freshest eggs in the world.

Another thing I loved to do was milk the cows. I would go to the barn in the evening and bring the cows into the milking parlor. I would sit on a stool and milk each cow in turn, collecting the milk in a bucket. The milk would then be used to make butter, cheese, and ice cream.

Of course, there were also some challenges growing up on a farm. One of the hardest things was watching the animals being slaughtered. I knew that it was necessary to eat meat, but I still felt bad for the animals. I would often cry when I saw them being killed.

Overall, though, I had a wonderful childhood on the farm. It was a time of innocence and discovery, and I will always cherish those memories. I am grateful for the opportunities I had, and I am proud of the person I have become. I know that my experiences on the farm helped to shape me into the man I am today.

OK, but even with this information, the writing remains pedestrian and without emotion.  Human writers would know not to begin with their birthday, for one thing. They might lead with a sentence designed to keep the reader’s interest. Something like, “70 years later, at age 81, I can still hear the terrified squealing of the hog as it was strung up by its hind feet to be slaughtered….”

So what’s an English teacher to do in 2023?  Well, first of all, we’ve been through this before when the internet emerged. Soon students discovered that they could download papers and submit them as their own.  Next came profit-making companies offering papers written to order.  And then there were commercially available Apps that supposedly could scan papers and detect plagiarism.  

Good teachers won that struggle by 1) reducing the number of papers assigned and working with individual students as they developed their ideas and wrote drafts. It’s harder to cheat if the teacher is overseeing the process.  And 2) lots more writing in class.

What’s called for now is emulating what my high school English teacher, William Sullivan, did more than 60 years ago.  Two and sometimes three times every week he would tell us to clear our desks of everything except for a single sheet of paper and a pencil.  What followed was what he called a “2-8-2,” meaning that we had two minutes to think–no writing–followed by eight minutes to write, and then two more minutes to read what we had written and correct any errors. He would put our writing assignment on the blackboard.  Sometimes we would have to include a certain sentence, such as “I wish I had missed that train.”  Or “I still wish I hadn’t missed that flight.” 

Even today I still remember one particular assignment: “Turn out the light; I don’t want to go home in the dark,” which Mr. Sullivan told us were the dying words of William Sydney Porter and challenged us to explain the contradiction. 

(Later that day Mr. Sullivan told us that we knew William Sydney Porter as the writer O. Henry. And some forty or fifty years later I discovered that Porter actually did not contradict himself.  He actually wanted the lights out so he could die in darkness. Apparently Mr. Sullivan changed his words to create a paradox for us to try to explain.)

I taught English in a public high school, an HBCU, and a federal prison, and I used Mr. Sullivan’s “2-8-2” all the time.  I got to know my students’ writing, and I’m convinced that their writing skills improved. Frequent in-class writing worked then, and it should work in the age of Artificial Intelligence, CHATgpt, Bard, and all the other ‘advances’ in our future.  

However, policymakers and administrators have to behave sensibly. I.E.,  smaller classes, fewer students per teacher, and heightened trust in teachers.   Those shouldn’t be a bridge too far, if we really want our young people to be thoughtful and capable citizens.

“The school system prepares your child for success.  Honestly, if your child listens, it’s amazing. The teachers–it’s unreal.”  That wise comment came from the mouth of one John Aldridge. He had fallen off his lobster boat well out in the Atlantic Ocean off the tip of Long Island, New York, at about 2 AM one summer morning.  He survived for 19 hours, an ordeal which included dive bomb attacks by hungry seagulls and other seabirds, as well as a visit from an occasional shark.  The boat was on autopilot, and his mates were asleep, alarms set for 6 AM, which guaranteed that no one would even know he was missing for at least four hours!

The story of John’s survival, which includes the remarkable reaction of his best friend and shipmate, Anthony Sosinski, can be heard on “Here’s The Thing,” a podcast hosted by Alec Baldwin.  The story is called, appropriately, “A Speck in the Sea,” and John and Anthony are great storytellers.

John was wearing only a T-shirt, shorts, and fishing books when he went into the sea. The boots filled with water and were making it difficult for him to float, but rather than kicking them off, he carefully took them off his feet, brought them to the surface, emptied them, turned them over, and put them under his arms, turning them into flotation devices.  He thought quickly, remained positive, and stayed alive…

Toward the end of the podcast, Baldwin mentions the value of living in a strong community (Montauk), and John immediately and tellingly goes right to the role of the schools, with a powerful and entirely unsolicited endorsement. 

I found that deeply moving; Baldwin mentions ‘community,’ and John says ‘schools.’

The connection shouldn’t be overlooked, because strong public schools are foundational. It’s a two-way street, of course.  When most of a community supports public education—even though it’s likely that only 25-30% of households have school-age children–good things happen.

In many thousands of cities and towns in the US, Community and School are officially joined in an enterprise known, naturally, as a Community School.  These intentionally bring together the best of both, and today close to 10,000 Community Schools are in operation.  Since the US has not quite 95,000 public schools, that’s an impressive number. By contrast, Charter Schools—which receive much more publicity–number only about 7,000.  I’ve been a big fan of Community Schools since my own children went to public school in Washington, DC.  They attended a public dual language school, but there was an early Community School not too far away, a place where parents were welcome and where additional services were available, and not just for children.  

I was reminded of this while reading an early draft of a book about Community Schools by my friend and former colleague Marty Blank and three other authors.  Apparently many people confuse the two approaches to educating students, which could not be more different.  Some Charter Schools have admission tests and turn away students with disabilities; moreover, quite a few Charter Schools are profit-seeking businesses. The draft includes this passage: “Community schools supporters tend to be wary of charter schools for several reasons: Charters are privately run and are often allowed to operate outside public oversight systems. When students attend charters, that reduces the level of public resources available to district public school systems. Moreover, very wealthy donors, including a handful of billionaires, have handsomely supported charter schools as part of an effort to weaken teachers unions and privatize public education. Charters are part of a broader “school choice” movement that includes vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax credits for families of students attending private and religious schools.”

Many in the GOP want to pit parents against teachers and schools, but in the best cities, towns, and schools, educating children is a shared enterprise, with the common goal of ‘Helping Grow American Citizens.’ 

I’ve written about this before; here’s an excerpt:  Because the purpose of school is to Help Grow American Citizens, it’s worth unpacking that phrase. “Help” conveys an essential point: schooling is a cooperative endeavor with parents and educators working in the best interests of children. 

Because schooling is a movie, not a snapshot, “Grow” suggests that School Boards should actively discourage high-stakes testing.  Those exams reveal how students did on that test on that particular day–and perhaps not much more.   Those tests (asking “How Smart Are You?”) are supported by those who want to sort and classify children. However, parents and competent teachers recognize that every child has talent and therefore ask a different question, “How Is This Child Smart?”

What does it mean to be “American” today? Is it flag-waving, flag-burning, or somewhere in the middle?  That’s an important, if difficult, conversation to have.  

The final word of the phrase, “Citizen,” also cries out for public conversation.  Just what do we want all children to be able to do when they grow up?  If we want adults to work well with others, then students ought to be working together in school on projects and other ‘cooperative learning’ endeavors.  If we want adults to be comfortable speaking in public, then children ought to be doing that in school. If we want adults to be able to make sound decisions, then students ought to be deeply involved in determining their course of study.  

 Let’s close where we began: “The school system prepares your child for success.  Honestly, if your child listens, it’s amazing. The teachers–it’s unreal.”   To which I say, Amen…..

With public education under bitter and unrelenting attack from right wing zealots, now’s the perfect time for those who believe in public schools and in the value of communities to step up and support schools and leaders who back them.

First they came for the transgender kids, and I did not speak out—because I am not transgender.  

Then they came for the bisexuals, the gays, and the lesbians, and I did not speak out—because I am none of those.  

Then they came for the same sex couples, and I did not speak out—because I am married to a woman.  

Then they came for me—but by that time the puritans, the fascists, and the power-hungry were in complete control, and speaking out was not allowed. 

Of course, that is not what German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoeller wrote back in the 1930’s, of course.  What he said was this:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.  

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.  

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.  

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Hitler’s supporters responded to Pastor Niemoeller’s warning by sending him to a concentration camp, where he stayed for eight years, until World War II ended in 1945.

His warning is regularly revised to reflect the threats of the times.  I was in college when I first encountered it, and, as I recall, that version began “First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–because I was not a Jew.” 

I’ve rewritten the lines because of what is going on now, here in the United States and elsewhere.  Do you think I am kidding?  Read this:

Robert Foster, a former Mississippi House lawmaker who lost a 2019 bid for governor, is using his social-media platform to call for the execution of political foes who support the rights of transgender people.  “Some of y’all still want to try and find political compromise with those that want to groom our school aged children and pretend men are women, etc,” the former Republican representative from Hernando, Miss., wrote in a Thursday night tweet. “I think they need to be lined up against (a) wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment.”  Here’s the full story:

And this: 

Michael Knowles—right-wing political commentator associated with the Daily Wire—said “for the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday afternoon.

As you are reading this, dozens of states are considering draconian legislation–more than 120 bills were introduced before the end of January–that threatens the lives of young people struggling with their sexual identity.  Other states have already passed legislation, which their Republican governors have signed. The ACLU has a good list here.  Another organization, GLSEN, is also keeping watch here. 

Banning what’s called ‘gender affirming care’ has been high on the list for politicians like Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Jim Abbott.  Florida is one of many states that has passed anti-trans legislation over the last year, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. 

“Gender affirming care” sounds drastic, but it’s not, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. “The goal is not treatment, but to listen to the child and build understanding — to create an environment of safety in which emotions, questions, and concerns can be explored,” says Dr. Jason Rafferty, lead author of a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on gender-affirming care.

Florida’s DeSantis has made anti-LGBTQ ideology a central tenet of his gubernatorial tenure as well, passing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and defunding diversity and inclusion efforts in universities. But it’s not just Texas and Florida, as that ACLU map makes clear.

Consider Indiana: Blogger Steve Hinnifeld, who follows Indiana politics and education, offers a chilling look into the Hoosier state:  

“They call it a culture war, but it’s not culture that’s under attack. Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly have declared war on real people: teachers, librarians, students and, especially, trans kids and their families. They’re the ones who will be harmed if legislators get their way.

         And several education culture-war bills have advanced at the midpoint of the session. Three are especially egregious: ACLU Indiana calls them part of a “slate of hate.” One would ban medical treatment for transgender children, one promotes book-banning, and another would force schools to “out” children over their gender identity.         

The American Medical Association, hardly a liberal organization, made it clear two years ago that politicians should keep their paws off the issue of transgender care, urging governors “to oppose state legislation that would prohibit medically necessary gender transition-related care for minor patients, calling such efforts ‘a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.’ In a letter to the National Governors Association (NGA), the AMA cited evidence that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity (emphasis added) and expression, and that forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic health consequences, both mental and physical.”

The right-wing Republican politicians paid no attention, and now Republicans in Congress have put forth their own anti-transgender legislation, hoping to put Democrats on the spot with voters.

While it’s easy to get lost in the nuances–what bathrooms should transgender students use?–the central point is what matters, and this is serious.  You must not remain silent or stand on the sidelines.  Even if you are straight, you know people who are not.  Even if you are straight like us, you probably have gay family members and friends. Like us, you may also have same sex couples in your family and circle of friends.  

They are all endangered…and so are you, because the anti-transgender people won’t be content with winning the transgender battle.  These are the people George Orwell warned us about in “Animal Farm.”  They don’t believe in equality, or democracy, or religious freedom, or tolerance, or in the principles of our Constitution. They want power and control.

What to do?  If you are a Republican, speak up against DeSantis, Abbott and others who are targeting transgender children, apparently just to please their base. You do not have to be a ‘liberal’ to oppose illiberalism. Work against politicians whose main platform seems to be the culture wars. Support mainstream Republicans wherever you find them, across the board.

Democrats and Independents cannot be passive on this either. They must demand and then support candidates who believe in equity and tolerance. 

Like every other profession or occupation, education has its own jargon, its own linguistic mishmash that serves to mystify (and sometimes alienate) outsiders.  Most of it is harmless, but some of what educators say covers up what ought to see the light of day. Below are three examples, one fairly harmless, one potentially troublesome, and the last genuinely harmful to young children.

“RIGOR” and “RIGOROUS”  Some educators and politicians who concern themselves with education are fond of these two related words.  Generally the folks who use them want the process to have more rigor or be more rigorous.  If they are trying to say that they want education to be more challenging and demanding, then we can forgive them for not having looked up ‘rigor’ and ‘rigorous’ in the dictionary.  Had they looked, they would have seen ‘harsh,’ ‘unyielding,’ and ‘painful’ as some of the synonyms.  

On the other hand, if they have chosen their words carefully and actually want the educational process to become even more painful, I suggest they do not belong anywhere near children or schools.

Whenever you hear an educator use those words, ask politely, “Do you mean ‘rigor’ as in RIGOR MORTIS?”

“OUR TASK AS EDUCATORS IS TO GET YOUNG CHILDREN READY TO LEARN”  I have heard too many educators say this.  This is NOT harmless if the speaker actually believes it. In fact, it is both arrogant and dangerous.  As a species, we humans are born ‘ready to learn.’  Young children are sponges.  

The adults in charge of education have to get young children ready for school, but that’s very different from getting them ready to learn.  School means rules, certain acceptable behaviors, et cetera, et cetera.  One hopes that the rules and procedures  fan the flames of their curiosity, instead of putting out the fire.  

If you hear this, ask for clarification.  “Aren’t children almost always ready to learn?”  If the guy (usually a man) doesn’t get the distinction, head for the hills (or another school).

“IN THE FIRST THREE GRADES CHILDREN LEARN TO READ; FROM THEN ON THEY READ TO LEARN”   People who say this are treating reading as an end goal, instead of recognizing reading for what it really is: a means to an end, with the end being understanding.  This is dangerous nonsense: Children learn to read because they want to learn more about the world around them, because that gives them more control over their environment. Both at the same time!  Dividing them, treating them differently, actually impedes learning to read, and learning generally.

Imagine if those same deep thinkers were put in charge of teaching children to walk.  They’d have kids walking in place for a year or two (learning to walk), after which they could walk around (walking to get somewhere).

I think this nonsense has its roots in an official attempt to evade responsibility for our failure to teach young children to read with confidence and comprehension. Basically saying “They haven’t learned to read very well yet because it’s a much longer process. Give us more time.”  But the truth is, children haven’t learned because we haven’t been teaching them properly!

The story is a bit complicated, but it goes back to the system’s embrace of a flawed approach to reading instruction known as Whole Language (and later as its clone Balanced Literacy). These two approaches deny the importance of Phonics and Phonemic Awareness as the fundamental engine of reading.  Whole Language stresses word recognition and guessing based on context (including pictures).  Phonics teaches that letters make sounds, and the sounds change depending on the arrangement of the letters.  

While English has lots and lots of exceptions to the rule of Phonics (say ranger, anger, and hanger aloud, for example), we learn to recognize the exceptions, but we don’t ignore the rules.

(A number of readers have brought up the issue of ‘Scripted Phonics,’ arguing that excessive scripting is mind-numbing. I agree, and I appreciate the correction. Their comments reminded me of some reporting I did for NPR back in the late 70’s from Connecticut, when Scripted Phonics temporarily ruled. As I recall, the idiots-in-charge had divided reading into about 20 discrete steps, and children were being taught those steps. They learned the steps, the idiots-in-charge declared that, because the children could pass the tests on the steps, they were–roll of drums–readers! Truth is, the children had learned to HATE reading.)

Educators have been fighting The Reading Wars for more than 75 years, but–unfortunately–teacher training has been and is dominated by Whole Language advocates, meaning that most of our elementary school teachers weren’t taught about the importance of Phonics.  The good ones–and there are plenty of them–had to learn about Phonics on their own.  The best teachers I’ve seen use a combination of Phonics and Whole Language, but Phonics is the fundamental building block.

People who talk about “Learning to Read, then Reading to Learn” belong in some other line of work.  Full stop…

You may have other examples to offer.  I’d like to hear them, so please feel free to share….