“Whole language” and moral panic in Australia

Year 2007, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 30 - 51, 01.08.2007

Abstract

This paper examines the media and political landscapes within which “whole language” is currently constituted in Australia. Through surveying the themes and rhetoric deployed in media texts over recent years, we consider how “whole language” has been taken up as part of a wider media campaign around education generally. We consider how this campaign has been instrumental in constructing a moral panic around literacy education in particular. We begin with an overview of how the literacy standards of Australia's young people compare on international measures with young people elsewhere. We consider how the media has bundled these with populist concerns about literacy pedagogy and other educational issues to create a sense of national crisis about education. We argue that the sociological concept of "moral panic" provides a useful and systematic theoretical framework for reading these discursive tactics of the media. Finally, we examine how a National Inquiry into literacy responded to this panic by reinscribing a familiar – and unhelpful - binary between “whole language” and phonics-based instruction. In the title and in the body of the paper we keep “whole language” in quotation marks to remind the readers that use of the term in the media texts that are analysed differs widely from its usage by literacy specialists

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• The OECD (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development) is an international
• organisation established in the 1960s with 30 core member countries including most
• European countries, as well as Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and
• Korea. Member countries are characterised by their commitment to democratic governance
• and market economics and provide a stable base for comparative international research on
• social and economic indicators of national wellbeing amongst member countries and beyond.
• The OECD conducts research across a range of areas but the most interesting to educators
• has been PISA. This program began a three year cycle of testing of 15 year olds in 2000 and
• continued in 2003 and 2006 with between 4,500 and 10,000 students tested in each
• participating country using equivalent test instruments. The number of countries involved has
• expanded with each round of testing with fifty-seven countries in the most recent round.
• Rather than being embroiled in the local politics of curriculum instruction and assessment,
• PISA measures the extent to which young people have mastered literacies in reading,
• mathematical and scientific domains of knowledge by this point in their schooling and how
• well they can apply these literacies to the real world. PISA also collects a vast array of
• information about student backgrounds.
• ii Public school education is largely controlled and funded by the states in Australia, who
• manage most elements of curriculum, assessment and reporting. However the federal
• (national) government has considerable and increasing control via its capacity to allocate
• additional special purpose grants to schools and its more general funding of the states.
• Schools in the rapidly expanding private sector receive direct funding from the federal
• government (Ryan and Watson, 2004). Universities, and thus teacher education, have always
• been funded and directly controlled across the nation by the federal government, though
• recent policies are increasingly forcing “public” universities to depend on private sources of
• income. In the period 2004-2006, while nationally a conservative Liberal Party government
• was in power, every state government in the nation was under Labor Party control. Education
• has thus been one of several sites of skirmishes between these levels of government in recent years.
• iii For an analysis of the actual announcement of the Reading Inquiry and a discussion of the
• motivation behind the crisis rhetoric, see Cambourne, 2006a and 2006b.
• iv It is important to note that the signatories were – and signed themselves as – clinical
• hospital-based psychologists or neuropsychologists (4), academic psychologists (13), clinical
• speech therapists (3), general academic researchers (1), special education academics (4),
• medical researchers (1). Half of the number came from three universities. Thus, none
• appeared to be, or at least none signed themselves as, academics associated with mainstream
• schooling. The Macquarie University psychologists, Kevin Wheldall and Max Coltheart,
• were named by Minister Nelson (2004d) as the key authors of the letter.
• v With a well-known Sydney-based “shock-jock” and frequent Liberal party advocate.
• vi For a discussion of the role of “evidence-based” research in literacy teaching, see Delandshere, 2006.
• vii For example, though now a regular opinion writer in The Australian, Kevin Donnelly was a
• staffer for another Minister in the current federal government until 2004 when he published
• the book Why our schools are failing, for the conservative think tank, the Menzies Research
• Centre. He recently released a companion volume Dumbing down. Outcomes based and
• politically correct: The impact of the Culture Wars on our schools.
• viii In the discussion which follows, some of the attacks on “whole language” are made by the
• article authors and others are simply the relevant journalists quoting the opinions of others.
• Direct advocates against “whole language” include Albrechtsen, de Lemos, Donnelly and
• Hempenstall. deLemos and Hempenstall were academic signatories to the Nelson letter,
• Albrechtsen and Donnelly are neoconservative commentators and Albrechtsen is an
• Australian journalist. In this section of the paper, extended lists of citations to media articles
• and press releases have been truncated in the text and shifted to Endnotes for easier reading.
• ix Also de Lemos, 2004; Donnelly, 2005d, 2005e, 2006f; Ferrari, 2006a, 2006b; Kolker, 2006;
• Maiden, 2004b, 2004c; Roberts, 2004; Yaman, 2004.
• x Also Cooper, 2004b; Donnelly, 2004a, 2005b, 2005c, 2005d, 2005e, 2006b, 2006e; Ferrari,
• a, 2006b; Hempenstall, 2004; Illing, 2004; Kolker, 2006; Lane, 2005b; Maiden, 2004b,
• a, 2005c; Maiden and Warne-Smith, 2004; McDonald, 2004; Pearson, 2004; Roberts,
• ; West, 2005; Yaman, 2004.
• xi This 30% figure surfaces often in attacks on Australian education. It is largely based on a
• national survey conducted as part of the Longitudinal surveys of Australian youth
• (LSAY). In 1997, the Australian Council for Educational Research published a study of
• reading comprehension and numeracy among (largely) 14 year-olds based on a comparison of
• four large and four small sets of data gathered between 1975 and 1995. The tests were based
• on "mastery", defined as the "competence... necessary for active participation in society". The
• percentage of correct items that represented mastery on these tests was approximately 80%.
• Thus, in 1995, 70% of 14-year-olds gained 80% or better on tests of reading comprehension
• and, given that this result remained static since 1975, as the Australian population became
• composed of far more NESB students, it ought to be seen as a net improvement over similar
• results in 1975.That would seem to be the most accurate interpretation of the levels of reading
• among Australian school students over that 20 year period, as represented by this research.
• Readers are left to decide for themselves to what extent this constituted a "crisis". cf Sawyer, 1999.
• xii Also implied in Albrechtsen, 2004b; deLemos, 2004; Donnelly, 2004a, 2005b, 2005c, 2006b.
• xiii In one rather odd argument, the lack of interest in a national spelling bee was regarded as
• “ominous” and indicative of Australians valuing education less than Americans (again,
• despite the relative PISA results) (Roberts, 2004). The same article did reveal, however, that
• the alleged “lack” of interest was due to “only” 25,000 students entering a national spelling
• bee, while 800 students entered a state-based spelling bee at the same time.
• xiv Also implied in Albrechtsen, 2004b; Buckingham, 2004b, 2004c; Donnelly, 2004a;
• Maiden, 2005b, 2005c; McDonald, 2004; Roberts, 2004
• xv Nelson called for mandatory literacy testing of trainee teachers on both entry and
• graduation (Maiden, 2005a, 2005c) and Donnelly (2005e) added that they should also be
• tested on knowledge of methods for teaching reading - teachers who had not been taught to
• teach reading, nor experienced proper teaching of literacy themselves, were having to “make
• it up as they go along” (Maiden 2004b)
• xvi Also Donnelly, 2004a, 2005e, 2006c; Editorial 2005b, 2005c Hempenstall, 2004; Maiden,
• b, 2005a; Maiden et al, 2005; Ritchie, 2004.
• xvii Also Donnelly 2006f; Farrelly, 2005; Editorial, 2006.
• xviii Also Donnelly 2006e, 2006f; Farrelly 2005; Slattery, 2005.
• xix Also Donnelly 2006a, 2006f; Editorial, 2006; Slattery, 2005.
• xx Green himself, Cambourne, Luke and Sawyer , amongst other educationalists, have been
• repeatedly named in media articles in ways that might be considered as attempts to construct 'folk devils'.
• xxi An example of the ideologically loaded and bizarre nature of these attacks can be seen in
• one particular article (Bockman, 2006), which slams Australian teachers for daring to suggest
• that Cuba had a high literacy rate. No argument is put forward to deny the claims – it is
• apparently enough to deserve criticism to suggest that a communist nation might be
• Australia, the education system doesn't serve you as well as it does in a number of other
• countries, countries that we'd like to think we're similar to…The biggest problem is perhaps
• the extent to which we are now depending on private investment in education. If you look at
• the proportion of national wealth, of GDP spent on education Australia ranks 18th in the
• OECD, if you look at the proportion spent from private sources, we rank 3rd …so we're
• shifting balance of expenditure towards private capacity which I think reinforces the capacity
• of people who are socially advantaged to care better for their own children" (Broadcast ABC
• RN, 8.15am, Nov 20th).
• xxv We surveyed submissions from individuals and teacher education faculties at: the
• Australian Catholic University, University of Technology Sydney, University of New
• England, University of Ballarat, Deakin University, Curtin University, Monash University,
• Finders University, Sydney University, Charles Sturt University and Macquarie University
• (where the Education faculty made a separate submission to that provided by the
• psychologists associated with the Nelson letter). Most of the 453 submissions are available
• online at: http://www.dest.gov.au/nitl/submission_index.htm