Whole Language is a Philosophy that Believes:

1. Language and meaning making are inseparable. Meaning interprets reality.

2. Language is language-oral or written-or other signals.

3. Language is social-children learn in the context of its use.

4. Children are natural learners, and will spontaneously make good learning decisions.

5. Children learn to read - write and tell best when the conditions are informal, natural, a "dinner table" approach.

6. Children need to be immersed in authentic text; novels, poems, story-telling, etc.; not basals.

7. Teachers demonstrate reading/writing/story-telling.

8. Teachers believe kids will succeed.

9. Kids need to own their learning and literacy choices.

10. Time to read, write and tell stories is essential.

11. Kids learn by trial and error, invention, discovery, intuition.

12. Curricular decisions are shared. The curriculum is integrated, with an authentic purpose of inquiry.

13. Collaboration is key.

14. Whole language privileges trade books over basals.

Whole Language - a Quick Checklist (From Whole Language Newsletter, December 1986)

TRADITIONAL	WHOLE LANGUAGE
1. Teaches reading from parts to whole	Keeps language whole
2. Is text-centured	Is child-centered
3. Is vocabulary controlled	Is literature based
4. Teaches skills in isolation	Is rich in context
5. Focuses on mechanics	Is rich in writing
6. Is quiet	Encourages verbal interaction
7. Limits parent involvement	Facilitates parent involvement
8. Sets criteria for competence	Enhances self-esteem
9. Maintains static groups	Encourages flexible grouping
10. Uses a cookbook method	Includes a variety of strategies
11. Prescribes methodology	Empowers teachers

Old Literacy and Whole Language- Sources of Authority and Difference

Old Literacy	Whole Language
Teacher	Learner
The official curriculum/cannon	Curriculum rises out of experience-needs-interest
Text - Basals	Trade books - discovery process
Meaning is in the print	Meaning is transactional
Power flows down	Power marginally shared
Transmission pedagogy	Child Centered - reconstructionist
Dominant Culture Asserted	Multi-cultural -- critical theory
Phonics first	Meaning first
Individualist learning	Collective + Individual learning
Theory isolated from practice	Links word + world
Formal tests	Kids watching, journals, tapes
Reading groups/skill	Reading groups/interest
Kid Agency denied	Kid Agency privileged
Drill + kill reading/writing	"Real" reading and writing
Information processing	Search for Meaning/identity
Local community/knowledge denied	Locality privileged
School workers deskilled	School workers empowered
Identify - attack weaknesses	Build on student strengths
Knowledge disjointed	Knowledge united

Both Old and New literacy focus on language, the development of individual meaning, as means for social construction or reconstruction. In this way...both are idealist.

Grid of Reading Materials

Reading Strategies, Goodman, p. 37-38
	A. Newspapers and Magazines	B. Research materials	C. Symbolic materials other than books	D. Problem-solving materials	E. Trade books	F. Primary sources
I. Social Studies	Current events Controversial issues Feature articles Political news	Encyclopedias Biographies Texts Journals Research reports Histories	Globes Maps Morse code Photographs Fine Art Music sheets Political records Cartoons Ballots	Building models Making clothes from patterns Reconstructing Human culture from artifacts	Nonfiction books Biographies History Poetry Anthropology Geography Political science Economics Human relations	Family documents Letters Government documents
II. Science	Weather Science editor Science news	Encyclopedias Text Journals Histories Logs	Graphs Chemical symbols Films Thermometers Scales	Experiments Cooking recipes Computer printouts	Biographies Physical science Natural science Nonfiction Poetry	Conservation records Notes of original scientific records Prescriptions
III. Mathematics	Business news Want ads Stock-market reports Financial section	Technical journals Histories	Films Formulas Expanded notations Scales Numbers systems	Solving problems Computation	Biographies Nonfiction Poetry	Written problems Business ledgers
IV. Literature	Book, play and movie reviews Narratives in magazines	Bibliographies Texts Histories	Text illustrations Format (book, play, script) Music Works of art	Theme and plot analysis	Fiction Poetry Nonfiction	Creative writing by students in class

Unrealized Potential Within the New Literacy

There is a growing tendency to see whole language as just another way to teach literacy.

This denies the real potential of whole language which lies in:

1. Its opposition to status quo schools--yet forms of " whole language" now become government backed.

2. Emphasis on collaboration-collectively-but collaboration to what end?

3. Is attacks on race/class tracking.

4. Its ability to open up class time.

5. Its attacks on racist/class-based tests and basals.

6. The shift in the center of meaning. There is more than one interpretation-but infinite interpretations?

7. Encourages real language with real consequences-but is attacked for lacking rigor and relying on spontaneity.

8. Gives some decision power to kids, parents. An inquiry process.

9. Sees knowledge as collective rather than individual property.

10. Linkage of theory/practice-word and the world. Learning demystified.

11. Sees knowledge as integrated - interrelated. Whole language is Issue Rich, analyses issues, locates kids in their material world.

12. Whole language RE-skills school workers.

13. But Whole Language has not carried its power as a critical theory far enough.

Critical Pedagogy Believes:

1. Ideas are socially constructed . All knowledge is political, not neutral.

a. Education is political is political and partisan.

b. Schools are vast markets, warehouses for kids, and recreate unequal social conditions.

c. Schools are also centers of hope for democratic equality--and resistance.

2. Knowledge is stamped with the brand of class, race, and sex.

a. Formal education systems are designed to reproduce class relationships and create people who are instruments of their own oppression.

b. Yet there is always room to struggle for what is true, to gain and test knowledge.

3. All teaching presupposes a view of the past, an analysis of the present, a vision of the future.

4. Partisan pedagogy seeks to:

a. Unmask oppression and domination through social inquiry.

b. Make people agents able to gain and test knowledge on their own.

c. Demonstrate the liberating nature of collective inquiry and action .

d. Raise questions for reflection, and conditions for practice, so ideas and practices can change. Education becomes experimental and exploratory.

e. Forge unity of learners (leaders-hip based on a sense of respect and equality).

f. Encourage people to examine the contradictions of their own surroundings. What are our problems? Are our problems similar? Where do they come from? What can we do?

g. Authority is rooted in respect and extended knowledge, not sheer domination. Leadership is earned-and earned again.

h. Dialogue to gain and test the understanding of interrelated, interdependent, yet contradictory ideas. Unity through struggle.

i. Demonstrate that knowledge is partial - a momentary grasp of ever-changing reality.

5. Theory into practice into theory. People are asked to take positions and rationally support them.

6. From the people to the people. Knowledge is drawn from, and taken beyond, the classroom.

7. At its base values:

a. Material equality

b. Political democracy

c. Importance of leadership

Weakness in Critical Pedagogy

1. Has, in some instances (Grenada, China, Cuba, Tanzania) served the interests of new elites rather than the interest of social and economic equality. Has failed the test of material equality...and a critically literature population.

2. Continues to rely on spontaneous decisions and understandings of students/participants whose oppression may not allow them to see a wider horizon.

3. Has regularly reconstructed basals which continued to deskill teachers and disarm students. Basals are inherently alienating.

a. Critical examination, then, had its limits

b. Examples, Grenada, Cuba, China

4. Another strain of "Critical Pedagogy" denies that social class is the axis of social change and elevates secondary issues like race, sex, etc. to an equal plane. This leads to

a. Irrationalism in theory

b. Pluralism in practice

c. Continued material inequality

5. A truly exploratory, investigative pedagogy hold everything open to critique.

6. Fails to recognize the relationship of the state (government), capital (profits), and schools. See each disconnected from the other.

7. Focus on discourse within schools rather than oppositional social struggle.

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