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Phonics has threatened the belief system represented by whole language, and, as a result, the fight is bitter and irrational. That is unfortunate, because it has been established almost beyond doubt that early, systematic phonics instruction is necessary for a large proportion of beginning readers. About 70% of children can learn to read no matter how you teach them, but they will read more quickly if they are taught phonics, and without phonics the remaining 30% may have real problems. Nevertheless, whole-language advocates, who hold powerful positions in teachers colleges and educational bureaucracies, are fighting phonics with determination.
The current controversy has some deep roots. Throughout the century, similar battles have been fought between those who emphasize the way letters and sounds correspond and those who emphasize whole words and stories. Why Johnny Can't Read, published in 1955, was a hysterical attempt by a phonics advocate to overthrow the then prevalent "look-say" method. In her landmark book, Learning to Read, published in 1967, Jeanne Chall examined the disparate studies undertaken over the decades. She found that beginning readers who were systematically taught phonics performed better than those who were not. She made it clear, though, that phonics instruction should not consist of mindless drills, should not be done to the exclusion of reading stories and should not extend beyond the first half of first grade.
With amazing prescience, Chall foresaw what would happen if phonics instruction was taken too far. "[W]e will be confronted in 10 or 20 years with another best seller: Why Robert Can't Read. The culprit in this angry book will be the 'prevailing' [phonics] approach... The suggested cure will be a 'natural' approach--one that teaches whole words and emphasizes reading for meaning and appreciation at the very beginning." The rise of whole language perfectly corresponds to this scenario.
What is whole language? The best person to ask is Ken Goodman, a professor at the University of Arizona. Grandfatherly, with a goatee and longish white hair, Goodman is the quietly charismatic leader of the whole-language movement. "Whole language isn't something that can be summed up in two sentences," he says. "It is a belief system that grounds one's teaching. A pedagogy." Goodman and Frank Smith, a cognitive psychologist, developed the theories behind whole language in the late 1960s. Goodman asked adults and children to read aloud, then studied the ways in which what they said varied from the text. From this work, he concluded that readers rely on context to guess an upcoming word rather than using the word's spelling. If this ability to guess were improved, and poring over individual letters discouraged, said Goodman, then reading would be more fluent.