It's a great success. Students are confused and do not become proficient language users, not because of their inability to learn, but rather because they do not have opportunities to practice the whole process. The Whole Language Roadmap True whole language teaching is, of course, exactly the opposite. What is required is an underlying belief in children and what they can accomplish. A positive attitude is the core of whole language.
Schools have a tendency to treat difference as deficiency.
Whole language treats differences as something to be expected, and builds on that. That's why it works so well with Native Americans, bilingual kids, black kids in urban and rural settings. Kathleena Whitesell studied the instructional practices of a deaf teacher who had a reputation for producing good students, children who enjoyed reading and understood it as a process of making sense. Whitesell was interested in knowing why the teacher was so successful. It was as simple and complex as that.