How to Make a Really Big Mistake: 'Reading Wars' Edition
Public school groupthink hurt many millions of students
Making mistakes is inevitable. We’re fated to make them. Lots of them.
But we do have some control over the kinds of mistakes we make. We can improve our chances of making small mistakes and avoiding big ones.
Consider parenting.
We who raise little humans might devour parenting books, blogs, and podcasts, but reality still knocks us off balance. We still make many mistakes. But as long as parents pay attention, they can improve their chances of keeping their mistakes small. In fact, many small miscues can lead to success. That describes my family’s educational journey.
My wife and I enrolled our son in three types of schools before switching to homeschooling when he was six. Countless other parents engage in similar kinds of journeys of discovery in education and beyond. Where we end up may be far from perfect, but it’s better than where we used to be.
In our day-to-day lives, incentives push us to get smarter over time. But what about big mistakes?
How do we humans make those?
Big Groups, Big Mistakes
Imagine failing to teach many millions of school kids how to read well.
That certainly counts as a big mistake. It’s the kind of mistake that can only be made by a big group of people. It’s the mistake that’s highlighted in the powerful American Public Media audio documentary series “Sold A Story.”
The series tackles the “reading wars,” and Emily Hanford is the host and driving force. Her series is an example of the power of strong storytelling. It’s helping to change a lumbering bureaucracy that has vanquished many would-be reformers.
The series exposes so much and sparks so many questions, only some of which were addressed by the documentary itself. I expect to return to “Sold A Story,” but for now will examine some big-picture themes about how America’s public school system kept making the same giant mistake, year after year, for decades.
What makes the mistake all the more enraging is that a much better option has long been visible to anyone who cared to pay attention.
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The Blinding Power of Groupthink
“And like the dance of the lemmings, we all march right off the side of the mountain. And generations of kids have been hurt by that.”
That’s how David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, recently described a public school establishment that fell for pedagogical quackery that goes by many names including “balanced literacy,” “whole-language learning,” and “the three-cueing system.”