Speaking Truth to Power

Literacy Lessons: The Politics of Basics FirstRobert Jean LeBlancUniversity of Pennsylvaniarleblanc@gse.upenn.eduWalking and Running in Literacy EducationThe scene is familiar enough to the scores of English teachers and students locked into the regimens of scripted curricula in urban high schools across the United States: the teacher stands poised at the front of the room with a heavy text in hand, her voice carrying over the crowd of restless African American and Latino/Latina students trying hard to keep their eyes open as the afternoon wears on. The teacher's gaze betrays boredom lurking just below the surface.No one is enjoying this.The lesson is just as familiar as the scene: decontextualized passages, identifying main words and main ideas, guided reading with scripted teacher responses. The passage's contents bear little resemblance to the students' lives and, given the exhaustion creeping over the room as the minutes tick by, we might wonder why anyone would even consider pur- suing instructional strategy with teenagers.When the lesson is over, the students quickly move to the exit. The teacher, beleaguered by the internal politics of an urban school in economic crisis, wonders why her students must be subjected to these kinds of decontextualized lessons day after day. She decides that maybe the students need to learn the important foundational stufffirst before they can move on to the more interesting stuff. other words, get the first.This is a common refrain when researchers and policymakers talk about reading instruction and the challenges of teaching literacy. Today, American literacy education is dominated by a model that Gerald Coles describes as skills-heavy instruction, rigidly sequential, tightly administered, and moving from small parts of language to larger ones (29). The prevalence of basics first in the policy arena and in the classrooms reminds me of the growth metaphor that Marilyn Adams, along with numerous other literacy researchers, often uses to describe a model of discrete, linear reading skills: In any complex endeavor children must learn to walk before they run. Learning [to read] must start somewhere: if not with letters and phonemes, then where? (68). short, the message from back-to- advocates is, this might be painful now, but trust us, it's in your best interests; you're learning to walk, and when is over, you'll be running.The irony of linear language and the promise waiting just behind it is palpable in the scene described earlier: a classroom filled with high school students who, despite years of slogging through workbooks, comprehension questions, and phonics worksheets, don't appear to be on the verge of being welcomed to run anytime soon. While the language of scripted curriculum proclaims eventual equal access, these products are far more likely to appear in the classes of racially minoritized or economically marginalized students (Ede; Sewall). Walk with us one more year, they hear. And when that's over, trust us, you'll be running; you'll be reading for meaning and applying texts to your own life and engaging as literate citizens. But that's for later.The purpose of my commentary is to highlight how the language of basics first in scripted curriculum promises a path to social mobility that is ultimately smoke and mirrors, notably when its plodding lessons are imposed disproportionately on students of color and their teachers (Delpit). column, I focus on the idea of getting the basics first and draw parallels between familiar scene (and the pervasive discourse that gives it life) and an example from recent history. As an example, I draw on a government ordinance from the Canadian prairies called the Peasant Farming Policy to demonstrate the political complexities of reading instruction in American high schools. I believe historical moment has a good deal to teach us about the dangers of a language of linear literacy progression and it injects some much-needed skepticism into the discussion of the unfulfilled promise of scripted, decontextualized reading programs. …

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