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Quill and Feather Pub [Public] / Re: The future of writing?
« Last post by Bill Hiatt on January 28, 2026, 03:31:23 AM »"When in doubt, blame the schools."
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't watched the whole video yet. (Edit: I listened to the rest as I typed his response.)
The presenter assumes a remarkable degree of homogeneity in American education. I taught for 36 years, the last one being I think school year 2014-2015. Among other things, I was a department chair, the coordinator of the honors program, BHEA (union) director-at-large for the high school, and a member of the superintendent's advisory council or similar under three different superintendents. In other words, I have a lot of experience, not only in English teaching but in the larger school in general.
When was the first time I heard about critical literacy? Today. Yes, the philosophy that the presenter claims was dominant since the 1990s and seemingly more or less universal, I had literally never heard of.
Are there controversies in education over the best way to teach reading (and many other things)? Yes. But phonics has always had its defenders, and though I wasn't involved in teaching reading in elementary schools directly, I certainly taught thousands of people who were the product of the supposedly homogeneous educational system the presenter denounces. They were almost all functioning above the level that the presenter assumes is pretty much all our schools produce. They almost all read whole books, wrote coherent essays, and though some used Spark Notes, they could also perform on spontaneous reading tasks and/or read books for which such aids were not available.
The high school I worked in was a good one, but it was by no means the best. Yet according to the presenter, such schools literally do not exist.
The truth is that the federal government, even if it wanted to, has few mechanisms for enforcing a particular teaching method. The states have a wider range of options but are much more diverse in their attitudes. Local school boards are the same way. And ultimately, teachers have much greater influence over the way in which things are actually taught than the video suggests. As one of my colleagues once said about what to do if an administrator is pushing you to move in a way you know isn't optimal, "Smile sweetly, close your classroom door, and do whatever you damn please." Now, this isn't always a good situation, but it does make possible a teacher being able to teach effectively even if there were hypothetically some constraints on best practices.
In addition, good modern schools are also heavily reliant on data-driven decision-making, which means that the teachers involved in the teaching of reading would have more exposure to the related research than the presenter assumes. Also, the efforts to construct standardized tests that measure critical thinking (in the correct definition of the term) are having positive effects. Teacher practices will sometimes be informed by high stakes tests, which can sometimes be a bad thing, but which in this instance should force a move toward more effective teaching of reading where such teaching doesn't already exist. For better or worse, everybody does the public accountability dance.
As far as writing is concerned, I run across excellent examples of it every single day, many by people young to have supposedly been stunted by critical literacy.
Are there bad schools? Sure. But is the pattern universal and government promoted? Not as far as I can tell. The relatively decentralized nature of the system would mitigate against such an outcome.
Also, there are other explanations for the gaps that the presenter notes:
erratic funding for schools
the tendency to fund through local property taxes, which means that students from poor families are more likely to attend poor schools
the rise of entertainment alternatives to reading, like TV and video games, as well as an internet structure geared to short attention spans
and many other things...
There are many ways in schools could certainly improve. But my experience suggests that the dystopian view espoused by the presenter is, at best, an overgeneralization.
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't watched the whole video yet. (Edit: I listened to the rest as I typed his response.)
The presenter assumes a remarkable degree of homogeneity in American education. I taught for 36 years, the last one being I think school year 2014-2015. Among other things, I was a department chair, the coordinator of the honors program, BHEA (union) director-at-large for the high school, and a member of the superintendent's advisory council or similar under three different superintendents. In other words, I have a lot of experience, not only in English teaching but in the larger school in general.
When was the first time I heard about critical literacy? Today. Yes, the philosophy that the presenter claims was dominant since the 1990s and seemingly more or less universal, I had literally never heard of.
Are there controversies in education over the best way to teach reading (and many other things)? Yes. But phonics has always had its defenders, and though I wasn't involved in teaching reading in elementary schools directly, I certainly taught thousands of people who were the product of the supposedly homogeneous educational system the presenter denounces. They were almost all functioning above the level that the presenter assumes is pretty much all our schools produce. They almost all read whole books, wrote coherent essays, and though some used Spark Notes, they could also perform on spontaneous reading tasks and/or read books for which such aids were not available.
The high school I worked in was a good one, but it was by no means the best. Yet according to the presenter, such schools literally do not exist.
The truth is that the federal government, even if it wanted to, has few mechanisms for enforcing a particular teaching method. The states have a wider range of options but are much more diverse in their attitudes. Local school boards are the same way. And ultimately, teachers have much greater influence over the way in which things are actually taught than the video suggests. As one of my colleagues once said about what to do if an administrator is pushing you to move in a way you know isn't optimal, "Smile sweetly, close your classroom door, and do whatever you damn please." Now, this isn't always a good situation, but it does make possible a teacher being able to teach effectively even if there were hypothetically some constraints on best practices.
In addition, good modern schools are also heavily reliant on data-driven decision-making, which means that the teachers involved in the teaching of reading would have more exposure to the related research than the presenter assumes. Also, the efforts to construct standardized tests that measure critical thinking (in the correct definition of the term) are having positive effects. Teacher practices will sometimes be informed by high stakes tests, which can sometimes be a bad thing, but which in this instance should force a move toward more effective teaching of reading where such teaching doesn't already exist. For better or worse, everybody does the public accountability dance.
As far as writing is concerned, I run across excellent examples of it every single day, many by people young to have supposedly been stunted by critical literacy.
Are there bad schools? Sure. But is the pattern universal and government promoted? Not as far as I can tell. The relatively decentralized nature of the system would mitigate against such an outcome.
Also, there are other explanations for the gaps that the presenter notes:
erratic funding for schools
the tendency to fund through local property taxes, which means that students from poor families are more likely to attend poor schools
the rise of entertainment alternatives to reading, like TV and video games, as well as an internet structure geared to short attention spans
and many other things...
There are many ways in schools could certainly improve. But my experience suggests that the dystopian view espoused by the presenter is, at best, an overgeneralization.
