em."The establishment of the normal school to train teachers at the same time Horace Mann was promoting the "new method" was not coincidental because theseinstitutions became the vehicle by which to continue promoting the "new method." With the help of John Dewey at the University of Chicago, Arthur Gates atColumbia Teachers College, and the growing network of normal schools springing up around the country, direct, intensive, systematic phonics was debunked infavor of the whole word "look and say" way of teaching reading, with no research to support it.1930: "basal reading" series introducedIn 1930-31, William S. Gray and Arthur I. Gates introduced a "basal reading" series which incorporated the methods used to teach the deaf to read. Today's basalreading books, still used by a high percentage of American school children, are essentially the same as the 1930-31 Gates and Gray books. Their most harmfulaspect is their rigidly controlled vocabulary, and emphasis on memorizing whole words before the letter sounds are learned.With "whole language," the controlled vocabulary of earlier "basal readers" has been abandoned. Children are now required to read words like "forsythia" beforethey have been taught how to sound out these new words. This causes frustration, poor spelling, and a hostility towards reading. Very bright children who can'tmemorize long lists of words and retain their meaning are placed in special education, when all they need is to be taught the 26 letters of the alphabet, the 44 soundsthey make, and the 70 common ways to spell those sounds. Some researchers believe dyslexia and the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder are actually causedby this reversal of the normal learning sequence.Children trained to read by whole language are made almost deaf to print if they are unable to sound out a printed new word like "gate" or "frog" by the beginningof second grade. In fact, they are almost as deaf to the sounds of the printed w...
