In their zeal to make all teaching relevant to real life, many advocates of whole-language activities would do away with the systematic and developmental presentation of language skills. They feel that spontaneous learning is the only kind of learning that needs to take place. The whole-language advocates believe that the important skills of word recognition, composition, and handwriting can develop from a child's own awareness of what he hears, reads, and writes. In the pure whole-language classroom, there is no scheduled time for the teaching of such skills as phonics and spelling. In reality, however, most teachers who say they believe in the whole-language philosophy have modified the idea of the purists.
Some teachers attempt to teach the skills incidentally as they are encountered.
Other teachers attempt to locate literature that can be used to teach a specific skill. No one can argue with the premise that children learn through natural processes. Incidental learning is sometimes the most permanent because of the circumstances that lead to it. However, several basic principles of learning are being ignored in many whole-language endeavors. One concept often disregarded is that children learn bit by bit as they add new skills to those that are already established.