Russ on Reading: The Reading Wars Continue: Scientific Literacy vs. Balanced Literacy

Russ on Reading: The Reading Wars Continue: Scientific Literacy vs. Balanced Literacy:

The Reading Wars Continue: Scientific Literacy vs. Balanced Literacy

The reading wars are back with us again. Carmen Farina, the new schools chancellor in New York City, said recently that she wants to see more aspects of "balanced literacy" put back into instruction in the city's schools. You can see the New York Times report here. The city moved away from balanced literacy under former Mayor Bloomberg a few years ago citing concerns that the approach was too loosely organized. Balanced literacy did not fit into Bloomberg's or his schools chancellor Joel Klein's corporate model of schooling. Farina, who has actually taught and been the principal of a school believes that balance is best.

Chester Finn, President of the Thomas Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank and huge booster of the Common Core, is horrified. InThe Balanced Literacy Hoax he says that balanced literacy is neither "balanced" nor "literacy." In fact he becomes a bit unbalanced in his critique. It is truly amusing to see Finn cite what he calls "semantic infiltration" in his criticism of the term balanced literacy. Semantic infiltration can be defined as using a term to mask its real intent (like the "Clear Skies Bill" from the Bush administration that actually would have allowed companies to increase polluting the air).

After condemning "balanced literacy as "semantic infiltration", Finn says that what we need in literacy instruction is "scientific reading instruction." Apparently Finn misses the irony of his replacing one example of semantic infiltration with another. "Scientific reading instruction" is at best quasi-Russ on Reading: The Reading Wars Continue: Scientific Literacy vs. Balanced Literacy: