That agenda, Mr. Goodman said, is an attack on public education using whole language as a convenient target. Whole-language teachers are supposed to teach phonics in context. But whole language is not just a reading and writing pedagogy. It is a philosophy. Its tenets include giving teachers control over what they teach and giving students a wide berth in what they choose to learn.
Advocates also believe in teaching children to question what they read and hear.
And that is part of the rub. Constance Weaver and Ellen H. Brinkley, professors at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, have studied the theological conflicts surrounding whole language. To many conservative Christians, God is the literal author of the Bible. Parents may not want their children making meaning from text because they believe their very souls are at stake if they apply that questioning attitude to Scripture, Ms. Brinkley said at a recent NCTE presentation. At the same time, whole-language boosters believe that reading instruction is an easy scapegoat for the frustrations of people who are uncomfortable with an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse society and an unstable global economy in which workers are readily displaced.