If you are looking for the sort of essay you give to your students to identify 25 different species of logical error, look no further than this doozy, “Reading Last,” published in Checker Finn’s Fordham Institute Gadfly. It is a full-throated defense of the role of Bush’s Department of Education in Phonicsgate — at least up until the point Margaret Spellings had the designated fall guy, former Reading First czar Chris Doherty, walk the plank.
According to the author, Fordham Vice-President Michael J. Petrilli, there was nothing wrong with “stacking” the DOE review panels of the reading programs, because there are “thirty years of rigorous studies [that] all reach the same conclusion: children must be taught to read systematically.” Doherty should be rewarded for his actions, Petrilli claims, not sent in exile.
Just consider a couple of the intrinsic self-contradictions of such a proposition.
1. If the evidence is even half as conclusive as Petrilli says, why would Doherty and the DOE need to stack a panel? Wouldn’t a fair-minded panel, prepared to examine the evidence with an open mind, quickly reach that conclusion? It would seem that either the evidence is not what Petrilli makes it out to be, or the panels were being stacked for some other reason.
2. Is it not the case that the complaint which initiated this investigation came not from a ‘whole language’ partisan or sponsor, but from the founder of a rather prominent phonics based program, Success for All? Does Petrilli really think that his readers are so gullible as to miss the fact that the Bush DOE was promoting one particular phonics based program over all other programs, be they whole language OR phonics based?
1 Comment:
1 institutional memory
· Sep 29, 2006 at 8:11 am
SCIENTIFICALLY-BASED? NOT EVEN CLOSE.
One of the Bush administration’s most pervasive scams (and there have been many) is that of so-called “scientifically-based” educational research.
As with many other Bush flim-flams, it all lies (no pun intended) in the name. In this case, “scientifically-based” actually means “acceptable to the right wing.”
Only research that is said to be “causal” is allowed. Research that is “correlational” doesn’t pass muster. Under these parameters, the Surgeon General’s finding that smoking causes cancer wouldn’t be acceptable, since it is based on correlation studies.
Much recent “research” that is said to be “scientific” has been funded by the same corporations that benefit from its findings. Not surprisingly, this is another example of how Bush and his mafia have attempted to steal the nation out from under the American people.
Some day, when the truth comes out (as it always does), many so-called educators will have lot and lots of ‘splainin to do.