Steven L. Strauss
If
you can’t read, you may have missed some recent reports on
“breakthroughs” in reading and dyslexia. If we are to believe the words of
Sally Shaywitz, M.D., co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning
and Attention Disorders, advances in brain imaging studies of reading are
nothing short of “revolutionary.”
“Society is
on the cusp of a true revolution in its ability to use science to inform
public policy—a revolution in which biological discoveries serve the health
and education of our children,” writes Shaywitz and her coworkers.
Shaywitz’s
federally-funded research is part of a much larger federal project in the
service of corporate America, a project whose goal is a workforce with “21st
Century Literacy” skills that can maintain the competitive advantage of U.S.
corporations in the global marketplace. Contrary to Shaywitz’s claims, this
project is fundamentally harmful to the “health and education of our
children.”
Drawing on
previous research in cognitive psychology that supposedly discovered the core
deficit in dyslexia, namely, an inability to sound out letters, Shaywitz
claims that her work on reading, using functional magnetic resonance imaging
technology, represents the second phase of a revolution in neuroscience—the
identification of the neural locus of the core deficit. It lies in the
inferior frontal gyrus of the left hemisphere of the brain.
“Revolutionary
advances in imaging technology make it possible literally to view dyslexia
from within the brain itself.” Anticipating a radical transformation in the
way society evaluates reading progress in school, Shaywitz declares that
“the discovery of a biological signature for reading offers an unprecedented
opportunity to assess the effects of interventions on reading in non impaired
readers as well as in individuals with dyslexia.”
Shaywitz
acknowledges the vision of Reid Lyon in the progress made over the past decade
or more in reading research, referring specifically to Lyon’s “targeted
program of research.” Lyon is the Chief of the Child Development and
Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child and Human Development, part
of the National Institute of Health, and in charge of funding. He has made the
neuroscientific underpinnings of dyslexia the centerpiece of the NICHD’s
research program.
But Lyon’s
research program is conspicuously narrow when set against the backdrop of
variables that he recognizes are crucial to reading failure. In 1997 testimony
before the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of
Representatives, he stated, “failure to read adequately is much more likely
among poor children, among nonwhite children, and among nonnative speakers of
English.”
His testimony,
however, continues with a curious twist of logic: “evidence of serious
reading failure cuts across all ethnic and socioeconomic strata. These data
underscore the fact that reading failure is a serious national problem and can
not simply be attributed to poverty, immigration, or the learning of English
as a second language.” He concludes that the focus of reading research
should fall on factors “irrespective” of these.
So instead of
funding research on the social underpinnings of illiteracy, Lyon funds the
research of Shaywitz and likeminded thinkers whose approach to reading and
dyslexia is limited and asocial. As this example demonstrates, the social
promotion of certain individuals to “expert” status, whether in reading or
other areas of funded intellectual investigation, may often be more a function
of funding priorities than of merit.
Why are
poverty, race, and ethnicity not regarded by U.S. government research
institutions as potentially significant contributors to the phenomenon of
illiteracy? Why are they excluded from the funding pot? Perhaps part of the
answer lies in an ongoing government interest in high-tech solutions to
perceived social problems. In 1989, for example, the U.S. Army Research
Institute convened a small committee of “experts” to review high-tech
approaches to problems in cognitive psychology. The committee entitled its
report “Brain and Cognition: Some New Technologies.” The members reviewed
past achievements and future possibilities in the use of magnet-
oencephalography (MEG), positron emission tomography (PET), functional
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and event-related potentials (ERP).
The committee
consisted of well-known academic researchers, including Dr. Stephen Kosslyn of
Harvard University’s Department of Psychology, and Dr. Marcus Raichle of
Washington University’s Department of Radiology and Neurology. Raichle has
been regarded as a pioneer in using PET scanning to study reading.
The report
begins by noting that “as part of its mission to apply modern technology to
military problems, the Army Research Institute (ARI) asked the National
Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, in its primary role as science
advisers to the federal government, to evaluate recent technical developments
in the monitoring of brain activity for their relevance to basic and applied
issues relating to the acquisition and maintenance of cognitive skills.” The
committee then endorsed its own yearlong work by pointing to the importance of
high-tech studies of cognition to “any major agency involved in personnel
training.”
The committee
concluded from its work that “it may be possible to develop measures of
brain activity during cognition, already studied in laboratory conditions, to
be used as indices in personnel selection and training in the military
context.”
However, the
committee also expressed its opinion that the more likely short-term benefits
of this type of research lay in “the development of cognitive theory and in
discovering the specific skills to be assessed…. Particularly promising
possibilities exist in the monitoring of the direction of attention, in the
measurement of mental workload, and in monitoring performance in missions of
long duration.”
The following
year, President Bush proclaimed the 1990s “the decade of the brain,” whose
declared goal was “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived
from brain research.” Bush’s short proclamation touted only the potential
benefits in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and
other neurological disorders. But he managed to find some space to observe,
“brain imaging devices are giving ever greater insight into the brain.”
Bush’s proclamation pointed to studies “conducted by the National
Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, and other
Federal research agencies.” Perhaps Bush had in mind the Army Research
Institute as one of these “other” agencies.
It is not much
of a leap to extend to extra-military contexts the logic of the military’s
own research interest in cognitive traits that are useful for “personnel
selection and training.” In fact, just such a parallel development has been
occurring in corporate America’s interest in the cognitive skills of its
workforce. Perhaps no corporate organization expresses this interest more
clearly than the Business Roundtable (BRT). The BRT was formed in 1972 “in
the belief that chief executives of major corporations should take an
increased role in the continuing debates about public policy.” Initially the
brainstorm of CEOs of Alcoa, General Electric, U.S. Steel, and several other
major corporations, it has since evolved into an organization of CEOs of some
two hundred of the largest U.S. corporations, employing more than ten million
U.S. workers, and millions more worldwide.
Their publicly
available literature states “the Business Roundtable has a single
objective—to promote policies that will lead to sustainable,
non-inflationary, long-term growth in the U.S. economy,” since “it is only
through such growth that American companies will be able to remain competitive
around the world.”
Operating
through its various task forces, the BRT is active in a number of specific
issues. In the 1990s, it became extremely interested in education. True to its
word, this interest in education is entirely subordinate to its “single
objective.” For example, in 1997, the BRT issued a joint statement on
education with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Alliance of
Business. Their statement began as follows: “As organizations representing
American business and employing some 34 million people, we are concerned that
the graduates of America’s schools are not prepared to meet the challenges
posed by global economic competition. Our nation’s future economic security,
and our ability to flourish as a democratic society, demands a generation of
high school graduates with solid academic knowledge, world-class technical
skills, conscientious work habits, and eager, creative and analytical minds.
Despite some encouraging recent gains, business continues to have trouble
finding qualified workers. The time has come for business to participate far
more actively in generating high achievement.”
They go on to
say that this “high achievement” must be promoted by having “high
standards,” and further that “business can help make this happen by
conveying explicitly the skills and knowledge demanded in the new economy.”
Continuing,
they state that “many steps must be taken to achieve success, but we agree
that three are particularly important, and we commit our organizations to
substantive action in these areas: First, helping educators and policy makers
set tough academic standards, applicable to every student in every school;
second, assessing student and school-system performance against those
standards; and third, using that information to improve schools and create
accountability, including rewards for success and consequences for failure.”
In 1998, the
BRT summarized its objective this way: “The Roundtable CEOs therefore made a
10-year commitment not just to improve individual schools but to reform the
entire system of public education.” These are not idle words. The BRT is
prepared to employ economic sanctions against U.S. students and workers in
order to achieve its goal of elevating the level of technical skill of its
workforce, in the service of global competitiveness: “We will support the
use of relevant information on student achievement in hiring decisions. We
will take a state’s commitment to achieving high academic standards into
consideration in business location decisions. We will encourage business to
direct their education-related philanthropy toward initiatives that will make
a lasting difference in school performance.”
Using its vast
corporate resources, the BRT operates at national, state, and local levels.
Its immediate goal at the national level is “tough” national standards,
“applicable to every student in every school.” Former BRT Education Task
Force chair Norman Augustine, also former CEO of Lockheed-Martin, praised
President Clinton for his “continued efforts to make achievement of high
academic standards a top priority,” and for his “call for national tests
in reading and mathematics.”
Recognizing
that “under the U.S. Constitution, states have primary responsibility in
education,” the BRT “asked [its] corporate members to create or join state
coalitions of business leaders and others committed to improving schools.
These coalitions are central to the success of the BRT strategy.”
Organizationally, member companies adopt individual states in which they agree
to be responsible for implementing BRT strategy.
A number of
states have state business roundtables, with CEOs of major corporations
working in these as well as in the national BRT. Lockheed-Martin, for example,
is active not only in the national BRT, but in the Maryland Business
RoundTable for Education, since it is based in Maryland.
Finally, the
BRT operates at the local level through front coalitions, such as the
Education Excellence Partnership (EEP). One of the EEP’s activities is
running television ad campaigns “to dramatize the urgency of the need to
raise standards in America’s public schools and to motivate citizens to take
action.” In one such campaign, the EEP recruited well-known major league
baseball players to recite the BRT’s line. Reading and mathematics are the
main core subjects for which the BRT has advocated tough testing. It laments
that “only a minority of students in elementary, middle and high school
achieved at least ‘proficient’ reading levels” on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress. The BRT has lobbied heavily in Congress,
consistently agitating for bipartisan support of its agenda. In this way it
has pushed its agenda closer and closer to legal reality. Congress has not
disappointed the BRT.
For example, in
1998, Congress set up the 21st Century Workforce Commission. It is “charged
with carrying out a study of the information technology workforce in the U.S.,
including the examination of the following issues: (1) What skills are
currently required to enter the information technology workforce? What
technical skills will be demanded in the near future? (2) How can the United
States expand its number of skilled information technology workers? (3) How do
information technology education programs in the United States compare with
other countries in effectively training information technology workers?”
The Commission
outlined a broad strategy to achieve the goal of increasing “the number of
individuals qualified to enter high-skill, high-paying information technology
jobs, and buttress American competitiveness well into the 21st century.” It
noted that achieving this goal “depends directly on how broadly and deeply
Americans reach a new level of literacy—‘21st Century Literacy’—that
includes strong academic skills, thinking, reasoning, teamwork skills and
proficiency in using technology.”
In a
report submitted to the commission to assist in formulating its positions,
Kenneth Button, Kenneth Cox, Roger Stough, and Samantha Taylor, of the Mason
Enterprise Center and The School of Public Policy of George Mason University,
wrote that “given the increasingly important role that IT (Information
Technology) plays in the economy, any long-term unmet demand for IT workers
has the potential to be a major braking force on the U.S. economy.”
To deal with
this potential problem, the Commission advocates an “American immigration
policy [that] needs to be flexible to address ongoing skills shortages.” The
Commission praised the work of yet another Congressionally convoked advisory
group, the National Reading Panel, which operates under the auspices of the
NICHD. The commission quotes NICHD Director Duane Alexander on the
significance of the NRP’s findings: “For the first time, we now have
research-based guidance from sound scientific research on how best to teach
children to read.”
More
specifically, the NRP recommended that the focus of reading instruction be on
teaching children how to take apart spoken words into their component sounds
(“phonemic awareness”), and how to turn alphabetic letters into these
sounds (“phonics”). The 21st Century Workforce Commission also praised
states for using NRP’s recommendations in the design of standardized tests
of reading assessment. It prominently cited Texas’s use of NRP-based
phonemic awareness and phonics skills to test kindergarten through second
grade children.
The
personalities involved in the various federal agencies have known each other,
worked together, and have had a common agenda for years. There are questions
about politically motivated appointments. For example, the Executive Director
of the 21st Century Workforce Commission is Hans Meeder. Meeder was formerly
employed by ultra-conservative congressperson William Goodling of Pennsylvania
to serve on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He served on
that committee at the time that Reid Lyon presented his testimony on the
causes of reading failure, the need to focus on phonemic awareness and
phonics, and the rationale for ignoring the social causes of illiteracy in the
NICHD’s funding agenda.
While serving
on Goodling’s committee, Meeder published a document in the widely
circulated Education Week that became the basis for a federal law that
would mandate phonics instruction in elementary school classrooms throughout
the country. However, under pressure from a variety of teachers’
organizations fearful of state-imposed teaching methods (not to mention
state-imposed curriculum), the bill never passed (see Z article,
January 1999).
Meeder moved on
from his work with Goodling, and headed an education policy consulting firm
called Horizon Consulting Services. Without letting local parents know his
background, and parading as merely a “concerned father,” Meeder asked the
PTA of his hometown of Columbia, Maryland to invite Reid Lyon to give a talk
to parents on the NICHD reading research agenda. He subsequently tried to
organize a reading task force within the PTA, but abandoned this abruptly when
another concerned parent exposed his political ties. He then ran on the
Republican ticket for Maryland State Delegate, and came in last in a field of
three. Following this, President Clinton appointed Meeder to his position as
Executive Director of the 21st Century Workforce Commission.
Similar
questions can be raised regarding the NRP. For example, with one exception,
all the members of the NRP are now available, at NICHD expense, to tour the
country, and present the panel’s recommendations to the public. The lone
exception is panel member Joanne Yatvin, who was personally informed by
Reid Lyon that he would not pay any of her speaking expenses, even when
lecturing as a NRP member.
Why is Yatvin
in Reid Lyon’s doghouse? It is because Yatvin was the sole author of the
panel’s minority report, and the only member to challenge the panel’s
composition, agenda, and findings. At a recent meeting of Whole Language
teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, Yatvin declared that “the panel was
stacked from the outset.” She noted that “the panel did not include a
single classroom teacher. Just about everyone was an experimental scientist.
There was nobody representing the descriptive research of Whole Language.
Nobody nominated by NCTE was on the panel.”
NCTE is the
National Council of Teachers of English, the largest professional teachers
organization in the country, and one that has always been interested in
hearing all viewpoints on reading. Yatvin thinks that her nomination to the
panel was attractive to the selection committee because she is a school
principal (that is, she is not a teacher), and because “I once wrote a
letter criticizing Ken Goodman." (Goodman is a leader in the Whole
Language approach to reading, and a former president of the International
Reading Association.)
It is easy to
understand why the NRP would consist of neither classroom teachers nor members
of NCTE—it wanted to avoid opposition to its rigged agenda. For example, one
of the NRP’s conclusions was that current teacher training in phonemic
awareness and phonics is vastly inadequate. With this in mind, Reid Lyon
stated that “changes in how teaching competencies and certification
requirements are developed and implemented is a must.” Lyon advocates
increased collaboration between state departments of education and colleges of
education in establishing required phonics-based courses for prospective
teachers.
But this has
already raised serious questions of academic freedom for Whole Language
professors, who are now legally required in some states to train student
teachers in intensive phonics and phonemic awareness.
Against the
NRP’s and Reid Lyon’s positions, NCTE has a known public stand in
opposition to any government law that would force teachers to use a particular
method of reading instruction. Whatever the relative strengths and weaknesses
of phonics and Whole Language may be, either as cognitive models of reading,
or as paradigms for guiding the teaching of reading, the current federal
embrace of phonics and rejection of Whole Language is entirely political. It
has to do with the fact that, of the two approaches, phonics lends itself to
quantitative assessment, and to rigid, scripted classroom lessons for
teachers, and, therefore, to the construction of tests that can be used in
ranking schools, teachers, and individual students.
Proponents of
phonics claim that the fast, accurate reading of single words, using the rules
of letter-sound correspondence, is the single best measure of a student’s
reading ability. Students can therefore be given lists of words, and scored on
the basis of the speed and accuracy of their oral readings.
Whole Language
advocates see letter-sound correspondences as one of many “cuing systems”
that readers use to construct meaning from text. Readers also use their
knowledge of syntax and pragmatics, as well as their background knowledge
about the topic, the author, genre, and so on. Ultimately, say Whole Language
teachers and researchers, readers construct meanings that are inseparable from
their own background systems of knowledge and belief, and which therefore vary
in fundamental ways from one reader to another. These individualities of
interpretation are assessable, but not quantifiable. Yet they are much more
important to proficient reading than the fast, accurate identification of
single words.
Therefore, it
can be understood that the political task of the NRP and the NICHD is to
provide lawmakers with a quantitatively testable model of reading, not
necessarily a valid model of reading. Even if only a narrow and minute
fractional component of the reading process turns out to be quantitatively
testable, that component will be the winner of federal research funds. For the
same reason, phonics, but not Whole Language lends itself to quantitative
experimental methods that are the basis of high-tech neuroimaging research.
Researchers in this field have no choice but to embrace phonics in their work.
So the work of Sally Shaywitz, a member of the National Reading Panel,
provides a high-tech, “scientific” cover to an old, but politically
useful, theory.
The current
politics of reading is essentially the political program of corporate America,
which sees itself in a life or death struggle with foreign competitors in the
global marketplace. In order to maintain its competitive edge, corporate
America needs a U.S. workforce whose IT skills are second to none, and which
can thereby supply the global market with the most competitive commodities.
The fundamental
skill of an advanced IT worker is “21st Century Literacy,” that is,
fluency in reading, understanding, and even troubleshooting high-tech
writings. But corporate America is worried that the current level of IT
expertise of the U.S. workforce is inadequate for effective global
competitiveness. Therefore, corporate America has undertaken to completely
transform America’s public schools. Leaving as little to chance as possible,
its ultimate weapon in assuring the successful completion of this
transformation is “high-stakes testing,” by which students will not only
be promoted and graduated as the test scores allow, but where students will
also be carrying their test scores with them on job interviews.
Corporate
America knows that there will be popular resistance to this transformation,
even though its propaganda promotes the change as in the best interests of
America’s children. BRT literature touts: “It is the dream of every
parent: a bright and healthy child. It’s the hope for every student: a good,
solid education.” And, “raising academic standards will help your child
succeed in today’s increasingly competitive world.”
But what will
happen to students who fail the national tests? And, what will be the reaction
of parents and students to the inevitable increase in public school cutbacks
of “non-core” subjects, such as music, art, and physical education?
For now,
corporate America is relying on media campaigns to influence public opinion,
to make its program more palatable to U.S. workers and students, and thereby
to minimize resistance. This entire scheme of corporate America has been
totally undemocratic. Corporate America has its program, gets Congress to give
this program the force of law, and uses the mass media to soften up public
opinion and minimize any political opposition.
Absent is an
open public discussion of what constitutes a quality, well-rounded education,
not to mention the health risks of high-stakes testing, or the kinds of
classes, methods of instruction, and methods of assessment that students and
workers feel are important.
But there are
voices of teachers and students that continue to press the issue of quality
education for all, and which oppose cutbacks in non-core courses. There is an
incipient education rights movement among teachers. Most significantly, there
is a growing movement of young people, along with their parents and teachers,
against high-stakes testing. In a number of states, students have organized
mass boycotts of standardized tests, even under the threat of expulsion.
This is a
movement against a corporate weapon that all progressive-minded people should
support. Z
Steven
Strauss is a neurologist in Baltimore, Maryland and has been active in the
fight for single-payer health care, Cuba solidarity, and other issues.