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Dr. Johnson is Vulgard, Common, and Shameful · The Reading Instruction Show

• 0:01
  Greetings. This is the Reading Instruction Show.
• 0:04
  I'm your host, as always, Dr. Andy Johnson. The
• 0:08
  topic of today's podcast is this. Andy Johnson
• 0:13
  is shameful, vulgar, and common. This is an excerpt
• 0:19
  from a book that may or may not get published
• 0:23
  someday by a publisher. Part One, Communism and
• 0:28
  Letterboxes. Now I've been reading two books
• 0:31
  about communism. The first, Communism, The Great
• 0:36
  Misunderstanding by Gennady Emek, and the second,
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  The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Ingalls.
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  Now I know there's a fish out there swimming
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  in the murky waters of a conservative think tank
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  who's going to pull this first sentence from
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  its context and say, aha! Johnson's a communist.
• 1:00
  I knew it. He probably worships Satan, too. And
• 1:06
  I know someone will hear this and call Fox News.
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  The headlines on conservative media outlets then
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  at today will be, Literacy Professor Dr. Andy
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  Johnson, a non -communist and worshipper of the
• 1:20
  Dark Lord, believes that balanced literacy is
• 1:23
  a good idea. And this... will be picked up by
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  other conservative media who will report, balanced
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  literacy is a tool of Satan. The International
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  Literacy Educators Coalition is a communist organization.
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  Literacy professors are spreading communist propaganda.
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  Our children are being told that Satanism is
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  good. Public schools are forcing boys to dress
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  like girls and go into girls' bathrooms. Furries
• 2:01
  want litter boxes in school bathrooms so they
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  can poop in a box. And that's how it goes, you
• 2:08
  see? It's all a big game of telephone. And for
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  the record, I don't recommend communism as an
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  economic theory. I am not a communist. I don't
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  worship Satan. And I certainly don't recommend
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  that anybody poop in a box in a public restroom.
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  Do that at home, please. Part 2, class struggles.
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  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described three
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  social classes based on socioeconomic status.
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  The proletariat, who are the working -class wage
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  laborers. The bourgeois are the capitalist owners
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  of production, and the aristocracy are the land
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  -owning, ruling class. Now in a charming bit
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  of synchronicity, I was reading about communism
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  when a scholar whom a colleague described as
• 3:15
  a serial complainer wrote to the publishers of
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  my soon -to -be -released book, Making Sense
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  of the Science of Reading, Context Matters, published
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  by Guilford. And this is an excerpt from the
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  serial complainer's email. I think he brings
• 3:46
  shame to our profession, and so is the reputation
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  most of us are trying to maintain. Yet I don't
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  see any of our professional organizations or
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  publications doing anything about that. Maybe
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  there have been efforts that I missed. I've been
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  trying to call them out in our field, but largely
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  to no avail." In his complaints, he used buzzwords
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  like antics, craziness, shame, sullies, and puerile
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  posts to discredit and cast dispersion. The ultimate
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  purpose, of course, was to silence me. And this
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  serial complainer has engaged in similar antics.
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  with scholars who are far more eminent than I
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  am. And I must say that I am sincerely flattered
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  by the attention. It appears as if the serial
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  complainer considers himself to be part of an
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  imaginary academic aristocracy within the field
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  of literacy instruction. In this role, the serial
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  complainer has determined that I quote, bring
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  shame unquote to our profession and must be stopped.
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  Oh, the shame I must be feeling for bringing
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  so much shame to our profession. Thank you serial
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  complainer for bringing a stop to all my shame
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  bringing. Academic class schedule. We can use
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  a Marxian paradigm to help us understand the
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  forces at play here. The aristocracy would be
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  a few well -known researchers, scholars, politicians,
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  lawmakers, and secretaries of education who believe
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  it's their right to make ruling judgments about
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  education and the field of literacy instruction.
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  In this analogy, the bourgeoisie would be the
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  scholars and researchers within the field who
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  produce knowledge. And the proletariat would
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  be teachers and educators who consume the knowledge
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  produced by the bourgeoisie. But like Marx and
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  Engels, I believe there should be no social classes
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  in our shared academic society. God damn it!
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  I knew you were a communist! I am not a communist.
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  In our knowledge economy, teachers, researchers,
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  and scholars each produce different types of
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  knowledge. Each holds different parts of the
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  same literacy puzzle. One is no more important
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  than the other. They are equal. There are no
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  academic social classes, but some within the
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  field of literacy instruction, like our serial
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  complainer, have selected themselves to be members
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  of an imagined academic aristocracy. They believe
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  that they should be able to dictate the type
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  of research methods used to determine effective
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  reading instruction. They imagine that they should
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  be able to select the knowledge that's worthy
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  of being consumed. They consider themselves to
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  be the arbitrators of truth and in such they
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  make grand pronouncements such as Teaching reading
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  is a settled science. And they take it upon themselves
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  to determine whose voice gets heard and whose
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  voice gets silence. And they also tend to get
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  paid well. Our aristocratic serial complainer
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  friend, he's determined that my shameful voice
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  should not be heard. Imagine that. So let me
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  explain what I'm doing here. I'm using my shameful
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  writing voice to achieve two goals. The first
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  is to disrupt the false narrative created by
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  the media and the science of reading aristocracy.
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  The media seem to be overly impressed by the
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  foppish writing style and large vocabularies
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  of some of our pretentious academic aristocratic
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  dandies. And I am not impressed by our pretentious
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  academic aristocratic dandies. Brilliance is
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  different from linguistic foppishness. The second
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  goal is to bring the ideas written by scholars
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  and researchers whom I greatly admire. to an
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  audience that doesn't have the time or the cognitive
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  space to read and analyze a 29 -page research
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  article. My shameful writing style includes humors
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  or attempts at it, lampoonery, dialogue with
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  imaginary characters, and other literacy devices
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  such as similes, metaphors, and alliteration.
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  They are purposefully included to create an aesthetic
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  response to what would normally be expository
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  text, so that the information described might
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  be more effectively carried to a wider audience.
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  For example, I wrote that journalists like Emily
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  Hanford are going to do what journalists do,
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  which is to write stories. just as skunks are
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  going to do what skunks do, which is to stink.
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  You can't expect a skunk not to stink. You can't
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  expect a journalist not to write stories. Now,
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  some might find the comparison of Hanford's journalistic
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  endeavors to the stink of a skunk to be mildly
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  amusing. But more importantly, it creates an
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  image to which the idea of journalistic irresponsibility
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  is attached. This literary device makes it more
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  likely that the larger idea would be attended
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  to and transported out into the real world. My
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  shameful writing style will never be found in
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  reading research quarterly. I know that. And
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  those who consider themselves to be academic
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  aristocracy will always consider it vulgar and
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  common and shameful. But it's my voice and it
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  contributes even in a small and shameful way
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  to the larger conversation about literacy instruction.
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  This has been The Reading Instruction Show. I
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  am your host, Dr. Andy Johnson.