In passing a bookstore recently, I noticed a poster in the window headlined “National Banned Books Week,” accompanied by a button saying “I read banned books.” The poster featured, among others, pictures of William Shakespeare and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
There is an old expression that the thief cries “Stop, thief” in order to divert attention from himself. Put another way, an old adage reminds us, “The guilty flee when no one pursueth.”
If, indeed, anyone really banned Shakespeare and Solzhenitsyn, such incidents must be as a flyspeck on the window compared with the millions of Americans who are permanently disabled because they are not literate enough to read those great authors.
Although the National Commission on Excellence stated in “A Nation At Risk” that America has 23 million illiterates, the new national report by the Committee for Economic Development, called “Investing In Our Children: Business and the Public Schools,” places the figure even higher.
This report found that 25% of young adults are functionally illiterate and another 33% are only marginally literate. That means more than half of our young people are effectively prohibited from reading Shakespeare or Solzhenitsyn.
The reason why they are illiterate is not that they are stupid or poor or disadvantaged. It is because the schools did not teach them how to read. Phonics books are banned from the first grade in 85% of public schools even though phonics is the proven, best method of learning to read the English language.
“Investing In Our Children,” the result of a million-dollar, 3-year research effort headed by the board chairman of Procter & Gamble, is addressed particularly to the responsibility of the schools to teach children those skills and attributes that will enable them to get and hold jobs. It is clear that employers look, first of all, for job applicants who can read and write the English language.
But employers look for much, much more. They look for what this new report calls the “invisible curriculum.”
This report says that public schools today transmit important invisible messages that adults will tolerate tardiness and absenteeism, that assignments do not have to be submitted on time or even completed at all in order to receive a passing grade.
Anyone who is familiar with what is going on inside the public schools today could add many other lessons included in the current invisible curriculum. It teaches students that acceptable behavior includes slovenly dress, unkempt hair, vulgar and profane language, vandalism of property, premarital sex, use of illegal drugs, and disrespect for teachers.
We’ve been hearing about the problems of schools through some 30 reports of national educational commissions over the past 10 years. We all know what’s wrong; how did this come about and what can we do about it?
The most influential American educator in the 20th century was John Dewey of the University of Chicago and then Columbia University. He fashioned the social philosophy of education on a foundation of humanism and behaviorism.
Dewey believed that the mind is not really the property of the individual but of humanity, which means the collective or the state. He opposed what he called the “purely individualist notion of intelligence.” He urged that the goal of education be to adapt the child to the group rather than to learn knowledge and skills.
Dewey was blunt in identifying high literacy as a chief factor opposing his new philosophy. He called it a “perversion” to attach great importance to “the predominance of learning to read in early school life.” He brought about a de-emphasizing of literacy skills in favor of his brand of social skills.
That’s how the proven best method of teaching reading, phonics, went out of vogue, and was replaced by a system that kept half of the children unable to read. That’s why the other half of students, with their limited and controlled vocabulary, could read only books which are “dumbed down.”
John Dewey and his behaviorist professors are the real book banners. They started the process of prohibiting the majority of young people in America from reading the great works of literature, biography, and history.
