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Forward to the Past: Writer Over to People · The Reading Instruction Show

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  This is The Reading Instruction Show. I am your
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  host, as always, Dr. Andy Johnson. The title
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  of today's podcast is From There to Here. It
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  also could be Forward to the Past. Let me explain.
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  One of the first things I do every morning is
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  to engage in some form of academic reading. I
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  read books and journal articles. and I reread
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  the books and articles that I've read in the
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  past. And when I do this, I highlight passages
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  where I made marks in the margins. And with these
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  already read books, I also read the notes that
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  I wrote to myself in the margins and I often
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  write new notes to myself. My future self will
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  look back and see these. This process helps me
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  understand what I thought was important at the
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  time of the original reading. And it helps me
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  remember some important points. And I find it
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  extremely pleasurable, and it focuses my mind
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  for the writing that I do every day. Now, I was
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  re -reading Ken Goodman's On Reading. This is
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  a great book, by the way. As are all of his books.
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  He was talking about transactions between readers
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  and text. And I realized that one of the reasons
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  why so many people have been snookered by the
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  incessant bleeding, bleating for structured literacy,
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  as opposed to unstructured literacy or chaotic
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  literacy or random literacy, One of the reasons
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  why so many have been snookered and bleated at
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  is because we, us in the meaning -based literacy,
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  we've been writing and talking to ourselves.
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  We write the things that we believe to people
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  who believe the same sorts of things. And then
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  we wonder why people who believe other things
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  don't believe us. And there's a tendency for
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  us to exclude those who believe other things.
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  These are the ones who believe us to be clowns.
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  And a clown, by the way, is a person who thinks
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  they know a lot, but in fact they know very little.
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  And of course those who believe us to be clowns
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  are doing the same sorts of things to us. Send
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  in the clowns. I used to be an avid letter writer.
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  Get to the point, Dr. Clown. Okay, before email
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  I used to write a lot of letters to people, and
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  the people I wrote to most often were my Aunt
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  Emmy and Uncle Neil. My Aunt Emmy must have thought
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  I had something to say or she liked my writing
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  style, but she saved all my letters and sent
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  them to me recently. As I read through them,
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  I realized that I was wrestling with some deep
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  issues back then, as well as describing some
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  complex things based on the stuff I was reading.
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  But also my writing style sounded nothing like
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  my writing today. It sounded nothing like the
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  books in which these complex things I was reading
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  about were found. I also realized that my writing
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  was pretty gosh darn good. Illusions of grandeur
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  fully noted here. But I was writing to them.
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  I wasn't throwing out words and expecting invisible
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  people to figure them out. You didn't have to
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  read things twice to get my point. And I included
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  myself, a real person, open for debate, in the
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  writing. And I even threw in a joke here and
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  there. Today, the kinds of books that I find
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  fascinating are the same kinds of books that
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  I had to force myself to read back when I was
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  an undergraduate student so many years ago. These
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  books haven't changed a bit. But I have. Those
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  books were written to people like the current
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  me, with heads full of knowledge and a deep passion
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  for things the authors were writing about. They
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  weren't writing to a college kid who just wanted
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  to go out and drink a lot of beer. Writing to
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  you. Again, do you have a point here? Yes. One
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  of the reasons why people don't hear our very
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  reasonable voices and aren't attending to our
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  very reasonable arguments is that we're writing
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  to each other. And we're using the same kind
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  of writing we use to write to invisible people
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  who will review our work to make decisions about
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  accepting our articles or offering us book contracts.
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  We use a writing style that sounds very different
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  from the language that comes out of our mouths.
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  And I'm hoping those authors don't sound like
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  that in real life. In this style of writing,
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  the writer disappears behind objective pronouns
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  and second or third person language. The first
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  person, the writing person who's writing doesn't
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  exist. Now, of course, I want everybody in the
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  world to read the book I'm working on. But who
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  I really want to read this book are two people.
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  First, those who don't quite know what to believe,
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  and second, those who think me to be a clown.
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  I'm writing to you. but in so doing I'm not writing
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  down to you, I'm writing over to you. I understand
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  that I'm over here with my knowledge and set
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  of beliefs and you're over there with different
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  knowledge and a different set of beliefs or perhaps
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  a little knowledge and a set of forming beliefs.
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  My ultimate goal, and I admit this upfront, is
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  to move you a little closer from there to here.
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  That is, I want you to have some of the beliefs
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  that I have about reading instruction. I believe
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  that the utter clownery that is the science of
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  reading and structured literacy will go away
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  if you just have a bit of the knowledge that's
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  in my head. It's impossible to think things with
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  the knowledge in my head. One of the reasons
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  why the science of reading people have been so
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  successful is that they've been writing to the
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  people over there. They've used stories in radio
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  documentaries that sound very much like the way
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  people talk. They've enabled the people over
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  there to see and hear real people while our quiet,
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  very reasoned, third -person voice has been ignored.
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  So here's my letter. Dear Emmy and Neil, this
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  is all nonsense. It really is. It's like a bad
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  movie. It's like Back to the Future, except it's
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  forward to the past. The same sorts of Back to
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  the Basics movement has happened in the past,
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  but this time it's much worse. It's like I woke
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  up and my worst nightmares have come true. The
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  government is banning books. Professors are forced
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  to teach things that aren't true. Teachers are
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  told what to teach and how to teach it. And schools
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  can only use approved reading programs. And worst,
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  children don't read, write, and think. they respond
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  to letters. Now I know this kind of thing has
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  happened before to a lesser degree. Things like
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  the Reading First initiative that was part of
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  No Child Left Behind, these things have come
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  and then disappeared as they proved to be useless
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  and expensive. But it feels different this time.
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  And can we afford to lose a generation of kids
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  while this boondoggle plays out once again? Your
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  nephew, Andy.