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Notes -
It's a Vibes-based World for Us
The New Yorker recently printed a piece about a conflict among parents, politicians, and educators centered on childhood literacy. One group wants teachers to use a variation of whole language learning, a method based on immersing kids in books and showing them how to connect words with images. The other wants teachers to use a method called phonics where children are taught to sound out letters and groups of letters, allowing them voice whole words.
Currently, whole language learning dominates curricula in the US school system, with some 60% of children being taught using it--especially in urban areas. Which is surprising, given that researchers almost uniformly agree that phonics is more effective. It's been settled all the way back in the 60's.
This is why some states and cities have begun ordering their teacher to switch to phonics. It's happening in New York City, for example, where whole language learning has been the preferred method for almost twenty years. It's happening in Oakland, CA, where groups like NAACP or REACH (an educational advocacy group), are putting pressure on local school districts to get teachers to use phonics.
But to what do we owe the pleasure of putting tens of millions of kids through the less effective of the two teaching methods?
The New Yorker piece author points to vibes.
According to what she found, whole language learning gained popularity among both teachers and parents because it painted a rosy, feel-good image of literacy education. The method's supporters maintain that children should be put in a book-rich environment and the rest will take care of itself--"through proximity or osmosis", as the New Yorker writer sarcastically describes it. And the teacher's role? To ask encouraging questions, such as why an author chose to use a certain color or why a character was represented by a certain animal.
The author delicately points out another reason why so many favor whole language learning over phonics: politics. Through some clever rhetoric, whole language learning has positioned itself as a counter to the authoritarian, regimented phonics approach, where children have to go through regular letter-sounding drills and have to read the same set of books.
Kenneth Goodman, a famous proponent of whole language learning, said phonics is steeped in "negative, elitist, racist views of linguistic purity." Basically, phonics codes "conservative", and that often was enough to get whole school districts to move away from it, damn whatever researchers say about its effectiveness.
Well, this is all an interesting story that explains a lot about how the education system works. (I would also recommend this 1997 The Atlantic piece to get an even broader picture). But what really struck me about the whole thing is that it's not just vibes-based literacy, it's literally vibes all the way down:
Whole language learning is a vibes-based approach to teaching kids how to read. It's supported by vibes-based academics doing vibes-based science. It's put into practice by vibes-based policymakers. It's supported by vibes-based parents and vibes-based teachers.
Even the New Yorker writer, despite building a strong case for using science-backed phonics, abandons her position at the end, going instead for vibes. She concludes her piece by stating that it's tempting to focus our energies on changing concrete things like school curricula, but what we should really be doing is attacking larger, more abstract problems like poverty and structural racism.
It's a vibes-based world out there. So lay down your arguments, your charts and numbers, your ideas on cause and effect, and start vibing.
My guess is that teachers find it much more enjoyable to teach using whole language compared to phonics, and so our non-consumer based public school system mostly uses whole language instruction.
Yeah, that's a point that's made as well.
Which is pretty damning, because it invites teachers to use a suboptimal method just because it feels good.
Using suboptimal methods just because it feels good is perhaps the most common failure mode for everything humans have done in all of history. The entire gambling industry exploits the extreme version of this feature of psychology.
Especially to the extent we are evolved to feel good using the suboptimal methods.
Edit: I don't need awards, this point is general enough it doesn't really contain much insight as far as I'm concerned.
I think this quip is question-begging, and just serves to muddy the waters by conflating several distinct phenomena:
Conflict between a society's short-term and long-term preferences.
Conflict between the preferences of distinct groups in a society.
How individuals/groups establish preferences, and how they understand and express these preferences.
There are important questions of fact involved:
Are whole-language approaches more effective for teaching students literacy?
Should effectiveness in teaching students literacy be the unique factor determining instructional approach?
Are teachers well-positioned to evaluate the effectiveness of various instructional approaches?
Do teachers have insight into how they arrive at their own preferences?
Do teachers misrepresent the justifications for their preferences? Do they do so knowingly?
Are whole-language approaches easier/more fun for teachers?
Do teachers prefer whole-language approaches because they're more pleasant for teachers?
Do students have effective political advocates for their interests?
Etc.
Sure.
I'm must making the broader point that it wouldn't be surprising to see teachers preferring to utilize a method that makes them feel good even against evidence that it is less effective at teaching the subject it purports to teach.
One of the more reliable features of human psychology is the active avoidance of unpleasant or painful stimuli and preference for pleasurable or at least neutral ones.
So my general belief is that methods people enjoy more are not likely to be the best methods for achieving a stated goal, especially when the benefits of said goal accrue to others.
There are many options/potential solutions for resolving such a disparity, but it does require us to admit that such a disparity exists, first.
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Undervalued comment. Thank you. How do I give you an award? Take this emoji.🥇
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