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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.
Wouldn't phonics eventually wipe out regional dialects?
AAVE seems like it wouldn't survive long under phonics.
And if more liberal areas tend to go with whole word learning, and presumably conservative areas with phonics, could this be why (it seems) that southern dialects are disappearing?
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That's part of it, but a lot more of it is just the straightforward result of modernization.
Ocracoke Island is a good example.
The Outer Banks were fairly isolated until about 80 years ago. The Wright Brothers had plenty of room to try out their aviation experiment there, but today the area around their flight path is highly developed. But Ocracroke Island, which is a bit further south is one of those places that I think is still only accessible by ferry. It has a unique dialect, speakers are known colloquially as "High Tiders", and their accent sounds like British Isles with some Southern sprinkled in.
These early American immigrants lived in a community that was fairly isolated from the mainland for centuries and developed its own culture. I have always loved the stories of several of these Carolina island communities who celebrated 'Old Christmas', basically because they ignored the memo about shifting over to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. But then you get radio, television, and infrastructure that brings the barrier islands in closer contact with mainland people and culture. Today, fewer than 200 people on Ocracroke still speak the High Tider dialect, and the island is increasingly populated by 'dingbatters' or outsiders.
It's the same phenomenon playing out in black southern island communities that speak Gullah.
On the other hand, there are places in Appalachia where it works pretty much as described - JD Vance goes Ivy Leauge and learns to say "wash" not "warsh" and "toilet" not "towlet", etc. But within these communities themselves, all of which also have radio and television and infrastructure, etc., it does seem that the areas themselves remain somewhat isolated, with fewer migrants or tourists, and that differences persist.
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