NRRF - Whole Language Name Changing

Whole Language Name Changing

The following discussion on the Teachers Applying Whole Language (TAWL) Listserv accentuates and confirms the reality that there is a sizable group of educators who deliberately keep changing the names of the practices they promote in order to avoid responsibility for the consequences the practices inevitably incur. Flawed education "ideals, paradigms and pedagogy" will always produce the same devastating results no matter how many times they are relabeled. There is an old definition of insanity: "persisting in the same actions expecting to get different outcomes".

Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 13:07:46 -0500
Reply-To: Teachers Applying Whole Language
TAWL@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

People were again discussing WLU's [Whole Language Umbrella] name and use of the term WL last week. I'm only now getting caught up enough to respond. Here it is . . .

I have a wholly different take on this issue. As much as we want to be "hopeful" and "weather the storm" our viability as an organization is in serious jeopardy. Our membership numbers are below 900, our conference numbers continue to shrink, and without some sort of major turn around we simply won't exist as an organization a year from now.

Frankly, I'm not the least bit worried about those of you on this list "staying the course." You are among the most committed, thoughtful people I know. I'm personally more concerned about how we build a movement and bring new teachers (converts?) to Whole Language.

Back in the 70's and 80's I was an "open classroom" teacher, and later found out that open ed was a part of a much longer history which I personally use the more generic term "progressivism" to describe. To this day I (and I suspect many WL teachers) support the basic notions of open education, and I see WL as simply an extension of what I have always been doing (of course we know more about literacy now and our theory has advanced but that always happens!)

So if WLU had named itself "the Open Education Umbrella" would you have joined? I we called ourselves the "Progressive Education Umbrella" would you have joined? Can you imagine any of the teachers you work with joining?

Names matter because people attach meaning to them, and the "public" meaning of WL is a soft-headed, un-scientific, dis-proven, failed pedagogy (Don't confuse this definition with what we as WL teachers know as WL!). I know of no pedagogy, (or political movement for that matter) that has ever been able to resurrect itself from this sort of public opinion. It is simply too much baggage to carry. Rather, as ideals, paradigms and pedagogy re-assert themselves they do so by evolving and changing their names -

We are different than we used to be, and we must recruit more educators if we are to again promote a progressive vision of schooling. I think we'll be much more successful at this if we don't start by claiming to be something the public has already decided is bad news. Finally, there are now many young teachers who know nothing of WL except that it is "bad" (the majority of the WL membership has been teaching for more than 15 years). Some of them are even what we would consider to be WL teachers although they would never use the word. So it seems a discourse with these folks must start somewhere other than with the term WL.

Steve Hornstein
Chair - Department of Teacher Development
St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, Minnesota

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