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LITERACY TEACHING
A Destructive National Swindle
CHRIS NUGENT 4th February 2014
Email: literacytesting@bigpond.com
PO Box 4 : Kallista : Vic : 3792
SUBMISSION TO THE
AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM REVIEW
CONTENTS
SECTION
PAGE
The first basic literacy skill: the alphabetic (or phonic) principle
The second basic literacy skill: read-aloud skill
The third basic literacy skill: English spelling
The disqualification of Australias literacy curriculum writers
4. A brief background to the ideological treachery and corporate dishonesty
11
13
7. 3 Warnings to the ACR: compromises with whole language teaching also fail
13
16
21
24
26
12.
Downloadable programs are the ONLY way to practically assist the nation
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ACARA: Adamantly of no value to basic literacy teaching in Australia
Minimum basic equipment for teachers and teacher advisers
Minimum basic equipment can be downloaded cost free
Downloadable programs for our parents and teachers are necessary in four areas
Regular broadcasts of national spelling tests and a code of integrity
Some advantages of regular nationally broadcast primary spelling tests.
minor differences between states, they simply follow the example and ideology
of the national leaders. And since at least the early 1980s none of the
government sponsored literacy curriculum documents in Australian major
educational jurisdictions has contained any guidelines to direct any teachers at
any level to the systematic testing or teaching of any of these 3 core skills.
4. Now, turning the national crisis into a catastrophe: since the early 1980s,
primary English literacy curricula throughout Australia have been aimed at
actually eradicating spelling from the testing and teaching of basic English at all
levels. Absolutely no other conclusion is possible. The proof of this too, is in
section 8 of this submission.
5. The spelling-for-age level performance of our school students was last
nationally tested all the way back in 1936, a distance of 11 entire primary
school generations. Also, despite official denials, Australias yearly NAPLAN
tests do not conventionally test accurate spelling skill. Proof again is in section 8
of this submission.
6. As an obvious consequence of the meticulous eradication of the 3 vital literacy
basics from our Primary English curricula nationally, Australian government
education systems at all levels between and including our kindergartens and
workplaces, have now not systematically tested or taught the 3 core literacy
basics for some 30 years. Yet in living memory, the back-to-basics mantra
has featured prominently in most of all our Australian Labor and Liberal
pre-election platforms.
7. And the culminating disgrace comes last. In December of 2012 a very public
global survey of basic spelling skill revealed that the scores of Australian
students in year 4 were the lowest of some 27 countries in the English speaking
world.
8. Some 9.5 million students and workers with problems in both spelling and
reading did not accidentally arise out of merely intermittent errors in our
literacy curricula. They had to have arisen out of deliberate and persistent
errors that had to have been systematically maintained over a 30 year period by
our education authorities nationally. And carefully describing this systematic
maintenance is one of the main objectives of this submission.
Planned educational rot that germinates at the roots affects the entire tree for life. The now 30
year old bureaucratically mandated teaching methods that have so clearly sunk Australian
literacy levels to the bottom of the international barrel, have got to be quite explicitly
expunged from all of the highest levels in all our jurisdictions. Clear evidence of its rampant
destructiveness now intrudes into the personal and professional lives of millions of
Australians daily.
.
The ACR has a massive job ahead if it. As I said earlier, I regard myself as being qualified to
comment with some authority only basic literacy teaching in Australia. But it is not
exaggerating my level of expertise to suggest that some of the lessons that have emerged from
my experiences in this area might be generalized to other areas as well.
WORD OR
CONCEPT
No of times
mentioned
Text(s)
Language(s)
Word(s)
Learn(ing)(er)
Read(ing)
Writ(e)(ing) (ten)
Speak (ing) spoken
Context(s)
Meaning
Create (ing)
Listen (ing) (er)
Story (ies)
Literature
Understanding
Digital
Spelling
Strategies
Multimodal (texts)
Language feature(s)
Strands
Film(s)
Predict(ion) (ie guessing)
Phonic(s)
745
244
234
155
148
142
118
111
95
93
87
84
79
64
48
48***
47
46
44
43
29
29
22***
WORD OR
CONCEPT
sounds of letters
prefixes and suffixes
syllables
consonant
vowel
handwriting
alphabet (ic)
phonemes
blending
correct spelling
test (ing) (s)
read/reading aloud
word identification
word recognition
phonic check list
letter shapes
spelling list
dictation
word study
copy
trace
discriminate
perceive/perception
No of times
mentioned
13
6+6
11
11
11
10
9
6
5
3
2
2+5
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
The figures in the 2 boxes leave most people speechless. How is it possible for a national
primary English curriculum to so deliberately avoid even mentioning almost all of the
main features that are involved in the systematic testing and teaching of the 3 core
literacy basics to school children? Study the two boxes carefully and for as long as you
please. The especially sad part is, that you dont need formal qualifications to make the
uncontestably correct judgment that the national curriculum is rubbish, but you do need
formal qualifications to actually write the rubbish for our teachers in the first place.
Bureaucratic or academic thinking of this type just cannot help basic literacy teaching
anywhere with anyone. It is the type of weirdo thinking (developed exclusively in our
expensive teacher training institutions) that is quite capable of assuming that you can build
a brick house without bricks or bake a fruitcake without fruit.
When a fanatical semi religious fervor such as this is in charge of directing the nations
thinking about what is needed for basic literacy teaching in schools, this fervor is called an
ideology. This ideology that has, at last, so patently removed almost all mention of the 3
core literacy basics from Australias 2014 national primary English curriculum, is called
the whole language ideology.
This whole language ideology has dominated the design of all government sponsored
literacy curricula produced throughout Australia since 1982. It is precisely this ideology
that has functionally destroyed quality in basic literacy teaching throughout the country.
This principle, regardless of all the ideological arguments, will remain forever as the very
first skill of the lot in basic literacy teaching. Before we can expect any adult or student to
read any word at all, each of its letters has to be written one correct letter at a time until the
word is complete. Regardless of the chaotic nature of English spelling conventions, no
academic argument can stand against the clear primacy of this alphabetic principle as the
very first skill which underpins every spelling and every reading activity that confronts every
student and every worker every day.
More to the point: despite the clear and crucial relevance of the alphabetic principle to the
teaching of basic literacy skills, no Australian education authority has ever once surveyed the
performance for age levels of Australian school students for their basic abilities with the
alphabetic (or phonic ) principle: not even once in over 100 years.
And this does beg an obvious question about the relevance of the qualifications of our
English curriculum writers. If none of our authorities have ever systematically investigated
the school based emergence of the very first literacy skill of the lot, then how on earth can
they regard their curriculum writers as being validly qualified to direct our teachers on how
and when to teach it and to whom?
The second basic literacy skill: Read-aloud skill
When students or workers cannot read aloud, they cannot read at all. Every parent and
teacher knows of the importance of basic read-aloud skill: it is the subject of the second most
important test of basic reading skill, especially with students who are in the early stages of
literacy development.
Literacy specialists when assigned to problem cases, invariably produce simple and
standardised read-aloud tests of easy through to hard words for students to read. The purpose
of such simple tests is to gauge how well the student is performing for his age or school
grade. Within only a couple of minutes, the literacy specialist can tell the parent or teacher
how well the problem reader can read when compared to other students of the same
approximate age.
Tests like this are so fast and easy to give. They are indispensable as the first quick measure
of the basic reading level or reading age of a student with a suspected literacy problem. The
surprise again however, is that no Australian education authority has ever surveyed
Australian school students for their performance for age levels in basic read-aloud skills
either: again, not even once in over 100 years.
So this is now 2 out of 3 basic literacy skills about which our current Australian literacy
education authorities can know nothing at all of any consequence. And by now you will have
started to guess that the news on the health of the third basic literacy skill is also bad. Your
guess is correct. This is the skill of English spelling.
The third basic literacy skill: English spelling
Correct spelling is at least 50% of every basic literacy task. All words do have to be written
accurately before we can require students to read them. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the most
recent Australia wide test of the spelling for age skills of Australian school children occurred
all the way back in 1936.
There is no excuse for this longstanding nationwide failure in the survey testing of spelling
skill: via a radio or television program, government education authorities could, at least
theoretically, test all school students in Australia in a matter of only 20 minutes. This would
probably make it the most inexpensive and thorough national literacy survey of the lot. Then
why hasnt this been done, you ask? All too likely, the testing of English spelling skills in
this way would arm Australias parents and teachers with too much inflammatory but
relevant data.
Notwithstanding, when there have been no new national school based standards set for
English spelling skill in a period of 77 years, how can any modern Australian school stake a
claim to excellence or even normality in its spelling skill?
The disqualification of Australias literacy curriculum writers
Lets quickly summarize this section. The literacy basics that most politicians in living
memory have promised to push our schools to get back to, comprise a total of only 3 basic
skills . These 3 skills have been deliberately de-emphasised to points of extinction for over 30
years by all Australian government education authorities. During the course of over a
century, the first 2 of these skills have not even once been systematically surveyed by any
school system in Australia, and the third skill, spelling, was last nationally survey tested 77
years ago.
So when it comes to the essential testing, teaching and curriculum programming for the
teaching of the 3 vital literacy basics in Australian schools, Australias English curriculum
writers in all the high places are much worse off than merely out of date. Even in the
February of 2014, they remain deliberately ignorant of the 3 most vital skills that are
critically relevant to the success of the very literacy curricula that they disseminate among
Australian teachers of literacy.
How did Australian primary English curriculum writers manage to so completely lose sight
of the literacy basics?
around 1982. This was some 4 years after its unprecedented failure in the massive $2 billion
Follow Through study in the US.
I recall the horror clearly. Simple horse sense for simple basic literacy teaching screamed at
the incomprehensible things that our school curriculum authorities started to delete
permanently from Australian primary English curricula. It was in the literacy teaching
insanity of this period that even the three key words test, phonics and spelling were
systematically expunged from primary English literacy curricula in all Australian
jurisdictions. Even in the 1980s, the consequence of this for teaching effectiveness around the
nation was a foregone conclusion:
The minute that you eradicate the word test from literacy curriculum documents, that
is the very minute in which you might just as well eradicate the word teach as well
and this happened throughout Australia. No testing will forever mean that
no simple teaching of a properly informed type will happen.
The very minute too, that you eradicate the word phonics from these same documents,
that is the minute in which you also eradicate the English alphabetic principle from
teaching school children to accurately write and read English words.and for
some 21 years, this too happened all around Australia.
Finally: the minute that your literacy curricula present to teachers only theories of
reading skill but never also of accurate writing or spelling skill, that is the very minute
in which your literacy curriculum authorities have abdicated at least 50% of their
obligation to teach children to write, spell and read accurately. And in the year 2014
this is still happening all around the country. See section 8 of this submission
Since around 1982 all three of these destructive errors of omission have remained officially
embedded as the implacable whole language policy for government sponsored literacy
curricula and projects throughout Australia. You need only to do simple word counts, like the
one in section 2 of this submission, to prove my point.
Its not as though there wasnt a massive amount of evidence around in the 1980s to tell our
curriculum writers that they were pushing our education systems toward inevitable literacy
catastrophes. Evidence in abundance was all around for all those who chose not to espouse
the vogue appeals of the new teaching fashion.
In fact, an abundantly financed corporate dishonesty supported the initial 1982 mandate of
the whole language revolution into all Australian schools. And a corresponding dishonesty,
still backed by all Australian governments, is responsible for keeping it there after 30 years of
disastrous results. Here are some details.
The whole language method was first subjected to comparative effectiveness trials alongside
7 other main methods for literacy teaching in the gigantic US $2 billion * Follow Through
study of the mid to late 1970s. For the duration of that study, the whole language method
was acronymed as the TEEM* model. It had originated out of the Arizona University in
Tucson and had been lavishly funded by the school book industry.
The now infamous Professor Kenneth Goodman had been one of its main patrons and he
subsequently went on to be hailed internationally as the founding father of the method.
Exactly why Goodman was actually applauded for being the founder of a failed teaching
10
method is still an enigma. A member of his staff, and not Goodman himself, had actually
designed it in the first place. And the TEEM method had indeed failed ignominiously in the
experiment.
(*Todays monetary values: *Tucson Early Education Model)
The vital point is this: when put to the critical test alongside 7 other main methods for
teaching children to write and read, the TEEM method had been beaten by a margin of up to
12 times the degree necessary for statistical significance. This margin of experimental defeat
for a teaching method was, and still is, unprecedented in studies of this type: it roughly
equates to the Melbourne Cup winner beating the field by half a lap. But it was the corporate
dishonesty of the school book industry and their political lobbyists that subsequently
succeeded in launching this singularly dismal experimental failure to the giddy heights of a
lucrative multi billion dollar global revolution.
It is important to point out that the original resounding failure for the whole language literacy
teaching method was reported in the literature of 1978-81 and indeed many times later. This
failure however, did not daunt the consciences of the supporters of the method: they had just
too much face as well as heaps of money to lose. With backing from a multi-billion dollar
school book industry, that was clearly able to lobby government administrations in different
parts of the world, the failed TEEM method was simply given a variety of name changes
and re-launched to make enormous profits around the English speaking world.
By the early to mid 1980s, education authorities in at least the UK, the US, South Africa,
New Zealand and Australia had all mandated the failed TEEM method, but under a variety
of new names, for the teaching of literacy skills to children in schools. By the late 1980s, the
name whole language had emerged from among the other names as the preferred one
globally.
By 1991, Martin Turner of the London based Dyslexia Institute was reporting huge
downturns in the reading standards of UK school children. He had isolated the whole
language literacy teaching method as the cause. It took a full 6 years however, for
the UK authorities to acknowledge that Turners observations had been right.
11
In 1997-98, UK schools introduced its new statutory literacy curriculum for its
primary schools. This was called the National Literacy Strategy in which, for a
period of 7 years, teachers were mainly required to add extra teaching in phonics
skills to the then predominantly whole language literacy teaching programs and
materials in UK schools. The UK has a population about 3 times the size of
Australias.
By March of 2005, the results of the 7 years of national UK trials of this mix of
methods were presented to the UK House of Commons. The House subsequently
ruled that the mix of methods produced distinctly inferior results to strictly phonic
methods. Later still in 2005, the UK national literacy curriculum authorities ruled in
line with these findings.
By 1995, this time in the in the US, Californian education authorities reported that
some 12 years after Californias official mandate of whole language teaching for its
primary schools, that states literacy performance rating had descended from the top
to the bottom of the US literacy ranking ladder. California has a population
approximately 1.5 times the size of Australias.
This literacy tragedy was big enough to be reported globally and was featured at
least twice on national Australian TV in 1996. It should have caused all
school education systems around the world to immediately ban whole language
teaching as an educational malpractice.
But 20 years after the first reports on the Californian whole language disaster,
Australian curriculum authorities are still choosing not to abandon it. These
authorities, even in 2014, apparently need to be forcefully reminded that a recipe for
a sponge cake in both the UK and US will never produce a fruitcake in Australia.
Warning signs from within Australia too, approaching and surpassing the billion dollar
mark, are still ignored to this date. One example suffices:
If over half a billion of whole language dollars (over a mere 7 year period) were
officially of little benefit to Australian school students in the one state of Victoria,
then a survey of similar audits in other Australian states should be mandatory.
From overseas and within Australia there is now an abundance of evidence to
show that the Australia wide wastage on whole language literacy teaching
programs since 1982 runs into billions.
By now, most school education systems in the English speaking world have learned the hard
and very expensive way. The 1982-2014 literacy revolution called the whole language
method will remain forever as the foremost born-to-fail literacy teaching method that it was
in the very beginning when it was first put on trial in the mid to late 1970s. Education
systems in Australia and New Zealand are the principal exceptions.
12
Indeed, by the end of their UK elementary school education, properly taught students
in Clackmannanshire could be expected to perform over 3 years ahead for age in their
basic read-aloud skill and 1.8 years ahead for age in their spelling. And this regardless
of their wealth, gender and ethnicity too .
Why have Australian literacy curriculum bureaucrats in all our states and territories seemingly
not wanted this truly exceptional level of success in the literacy basics for all Australian
school children? None seem so blind as those Australian literacy curriculum writers who are
deliberately deaf as well.
7. Three warnings to the ACR: compromises with whole language teaching also fail
The ACR and the Federal Minister for Education need to take special note of a number of
events that occurred at and since the time of the 2005 National Inquiry into Literacy
Teaching in Australian Schools (the NITL). If they do not, they will run the risk of making a
similar mistake to the one made by Dr Brendan Nelson in that year. Nelsons chief mistake
was to trust an ideologically prejudiced bureaucracy that clearly had a vested interest in
protecting the professional reputations of its own members and close associates. See section
11 of this submission for more details here. So lets now bring a couple of verifiable
historical events into the spotlight.
The first nationwide attempt to actually compromise with whole language literacy
teaching curricula occurred in the UK in the years 1998 to 2005. This compromise
was called the National Literacy Strategy in which, for a period of 7 years, teachers
nationally were mainly required to add extra teaching in phonic skills to the then
predominantly whole language curricula within UK schools.
13
As reported in brief earlier, by March of 2005 the results of the national trialing of
this mix of methods were presented to the UK House of Commons. The House
subsequently ruled that this mix of methods produced distinctly inferior results to
strictly phonic methods. By the end of March, the House had ruled in line with the
national finding. Strict phonic programs now became the in thing for the UK because
even the compromises with whole language literacy curricula had been discredited
throughout the nation.
In light of the very expensive events that followed Australias 2005 NITL, this 9 year old
national UK failure in an ideological compromise with whole language teaching methods,
should scream a warning to both the Federal Minister for Education and the ACR. But will
it? The Australian network of whole language lobbyists does have an established record for
treacherous disregard of both inconvenient evidence and Ministerial authority. Consider the
following please:
At least 3 major Australian literacy teaching enterprises with dire multi million and even
billion dollar consequences stand out as prime examples of 21st century folly in continuing to
fund the whole language literacy teaching disaster throughout Australia.
did not examine and report on the spelling abilities of Australian school students.
did not critically examine and report on the mandatory government literacy curricula
that all Australian school teachers are required to follow.
14
did not examine or report on the characteristics of any tests used by our Australian
education authorities to gauge literacy levels in schools.
did not include that vitally relevant information from the national UK literacy testing
that was reported to the UK House of Commons in the March of 2005.
From the foregoing 4 omissions alone it is safe to conclude that the NITL was
bureaucratically sabotaged to (1) report only on carefully selected features of Australias
school based literacy crisis and (2) strategically avoid all patent truths or realities that would
have been far too hard for a huge pool of bureaucrats to admit to.
Dr Nelsons public commitment, as Federal Minister for Education, to get to the bottom of
Australias serious school based literacy problems had been neatly decapitated by his own
bureaucracy. In the fanfare that followed the December 2005 publication of the NITL report,
much was made of its few apparently positive features but nothing at all of its nationally
crippling omissions such as the foregoing.
At that time, my formal protests to the federal Minister for Education, even via government
senate members, met with the invariant perfunctory quashing: and this foreshadows an
ominous premonition. The labyrinth of bureaucratic side-trackers that gave the two finger
salute to the federal Minister for Education in 2005 will most likely strive to do the very same
thing with the findings of the ACR. Minister Pyne is going to need the full support of the
federal cabinet if hes going to do what he will have to do in order to do anything thats
permanently good.
15
education authorities, against all the evidence, mandated the whole language method for use
in Australian preparatory classes. US research in 2001 put the cost of the Reading Recovery
program anywhere between $4,625 and $9,200 per individual student. Wow!
An extraordinary level of statistical cheating in reporting.
With some 3,900 published childrens book titles in the recommended manual for the
Reading Recovery program, there has all along been a need for a multi-billion dollar industry
to protect a sizable investment. Only in-house reports funded by the business advocates of the
program, ever seem to describe the program in especially favourable terms. Independent US
research on these in-house reports shows that approximately 40% to 50% of the data on
children eligible for the Reading Recovery program are actually omitted from final analyses.
This is just another case of blatantly dishonest whole language fanatics avoiding the
publication of seriously bad truth. The fact is: the very high percentage of initially eligible
Reading Recovery students that are not included in the final data pool are effectively the
programs failed students. These failed students are simply never reported on by those
program advocates who go on to falsely claim up to a 75% to 85% success rate for Reading
Recovery students.
In light of these verifiable facts, the true success rate of the Reading Recovery program can
be more appropriately estimated as follows. If the success rate for Reading Recovery were to
be taken as all the eligible students whose performance caught up with the national average
then the true success rate for the Reading Recovery program would plummet to a figure
between 6.5% and 14.7%. (Pollock 1994)
Emeritus Professor Diane McGuiness also wrote more recently: Properly controlled research
on Reading Recovery shows repeatedly that Reading Recovery tutoring has little or no effect,
or if an effect is found, the gains quickly evaporate. For example, in 1999 the San Diego
authorities, after 7 years of a controlled $20 million trial, reported (1) that the program did
not produce any significant long term benefits for its students and (2) it was actually inferior
in some respects to no special reading program at all.
Only the whole language Reading Recovery program seems able to report truly dramatic
experimental flops as success experiences: only a deliberately blind bureaucracy can refuse to
acknowledge that the emperor is rudely naked. The effectiveness of the exorbitantly priced
Reading Recovery program has never been validated in any study that has used conventional
methods of statistical analysis. Quite to the contrary! At best, the Reading Recovery program
is an overused educational swindle, and at worst it is an educational malpractice.
16
English spelling only twice. But when this same (2010) document included 10 more errors
that were almost equally as educationally destructive, then the impulse to laugh out loud
disintegrated: the clever countrys boast, via ACARA, of a world class (sic) quality basic
literacy curriculum for its schools had been irretrievably exposed.
The revised final version of this curriculum in December of 2012 showed only occasional
differences. Those, who at some future date, implement the ACR recommendations in our
schools will need to restore the systematic testing as well as teaching of English spelling to
all levels of primary and secondary school education. And here are the reasons:
Since the early 1980s, government literacy curricula throughout Australia have been
oriented towards systematically eradicating correct spelling from the testing and
teaching of basic English at all levels. Impossible though this seems, absolutely no other
conclusion is possible. Consider the 10 points below to start with.
Since 1994 all new government sponsored English curricula for primary schools in
Australia have been based directly on the original or updated versions of the never
ever validated Outcomes Based Education method for curriculum design. None of
these new curricula have ever contained any recommended year level spelling lists,
any sample spelling tests, or even any lists of English spelling rules for Australian
literacy teachers in the primary school.
Our Australian National Primary School Literacy Survey in 1996 was the first
such survey in a period of 21 years. It did not contain a spelling test.
Since 1996 none of our annual State of Victoria primary school surveys of basic
English skills (e.g. the LAP and AIM tests) have included an age level spelling test.
In 1982, Victorias recommended year level spelling list for primary schools listed
over 1,300 words that were organized in 16 levels for children in years 3 to 6.
In 1994 however, our only recommended spelling list was only 100 words long.
As described earlier in this submission, our 2005 National Inquiry into the
Teaching of Literacy in Australian Schools did not even attempt to investigate or
comment on the spelling skills of Australias school students. It had been the first
ever such national inquiry in the history of Australian literacy education.
17
In all except 1 of the above mentioned documents, the word dictation could not be
found at all. It wasnt mentioned even accidentally. It seems to have been
obliterated even from the thinking of Australias literacy curriculum writers.
Yet even as far back as 1996, industry sources had reported that a staggering 70%
of Australian youth entering the workforce failed industry standards in spelling.
And finally of course there is the December 2012 report that the spelling scores of
Australian school children in year 4 were the worst of 27 countries in the English
speaking world.
18
Three points need to be made about these whole language spelling test items
I have not made any mistake in the reporting: Yes, in 1996, in the state of Victoria the
very same spelling survey words were given to children in both years 3 and 5
With one exception, all these spelling test words for years 3 and 5 can be found in the
old fashioned spelling lists for years 1 and 2.
Even then, the Victorian students in 1996 were not required to write the words in full
from memory. In each case they had only to encircle the correctly spelt word from a set
of 4 alternatives provided. e.g. lookt looked
lookd
lukt.
There was indeed a time in Australian literacy education, when our state education
authorities were actually prepared to honestly report the spelling-for-age levels of the
students in Australian schools. Strategically locked away in government sponsored archives
are records of a set of old fashioned spelling tests from 1936 to 1969.
Surviving tattered copies of these heritage era documents occasionally crop up in rare
places. From a photocopy of one of these copies I present below evidence of a distant past
official honesty in the reporting of the age-level spelling skills of Australian school children.
My 36 page copy of the evidence is entitled ACER SPELLING TESTS. It was originally
produced by The Australian Council for Educational Research in 1936 and went through
13 officially sanctioned reprints until the last one in 1969. For these 33 years it was a
guide for the age-level spelling skills of 8 to 14 year old school students in all Australian
states. There were 6 comparable tests in the book and each test contained 50 words. The test
words from only one of them follow.
gold bring high took part north burn climb press sometimes return music
speaks size obtain coffee chimney weigh wear towel choose usual allowed
ought quarrel tomato canoe described receive concern label opposite sincerely
occupy familiar quantity opportunity extraordinary annual receipt consequence
committee orchestra persistence recommended stationery indispensable unanimous
privilege irresistible
19
Each test word had to be written in full from memory. In those days 8.5 year old students
were expected to score around 13 right 9.5 year olds 21 right 10.5 year olds 28 right
11.5 year olds 34 12.5 year olds 39 13.5 year olds 42.
Many thousands of copies of this Australian educational landmark heritage book had to have
been printed. Perhaps pointedly however, on a recent trip to the head offices of the ACER
in Melbourne, I was informed by the librarian that she was unable to actually find an
inspection copy: not even in the ACER archives. Interestingly too, at the time of my visit I
was not permitted to photocopy any records of former ACER tests. Was the ACER trying to
hide evidence?
Whole language theory: all slogans, no substance and no spelling either.
All whole language literacy teaching agendas ignore the obligation to consistently test or teach
accurate spelling at any level. An explanation of a type for this insane pedagogical thinking is
available only if we choose to examine the widely promoted slogans or tenets that underpin the
whole language theory. Because whole language teaching is so prevalent in our schools, its
theoretical underpinning must be challenged before the ACR then subsequently by the ACR.
The box below contains a selection of only six of the many sloganized tenets that have been
used, since around 1982, to promote whole language teaching methods and materials in
Australia. These tenets are still current.
Six whole language slogans for teachers
Reading is mainly a non visual cognitive act.
Learning to read begins at birth.
The only reason for reading is to construct meaning.
Readers use a range of strategies to construct meaning.
Without meaning the associations between letters and sounds cannot be known.
Reading requires an understanding that no text is neutral in its opinions.
A measure of simple commonsense is all that is needed to spot the extremism in tenets like
these. For a start, the 1981 assertion by Sloan and Latham that reading is mainly a non
visual cognitive act is clearly from a realm of theoretical fantasy for non humans.
The remaining five tenets were taken only 2 years ago from the website for Australias
national Literacy Educators Coalition. The tenets were taken from the what-we-believe
page on that organizations website. By self acclaim, the 400 plus membership list for the
coalition reads like a list of whos who within Australias ardently committed whole
language collegiate. The collegiate members are still serious about the validity of these five
tenets and that is why we are obliged to give them serious attention. Well take each tenet in
order and answer it:
20
These publicly espoused beliefs of Australias Literacy Educators Coalition on the subject
of reading theory but not also of spelling theory, speak very poorly indeed of the university
training of the groups membership.
The above few snippets from the Educators inventory of mantras have served their purpose.
It was all along going to be quite impossible for any literacy curriculum, based on trite whole
language slogans like these, to teach the 3 literacy basics to our school children. The whole
language attitude to the teaching of spelling in our schools universally presumes that
eventual accuracy in a students writing will just so naturally occur as an incidental byproduct of eventual accuracy in his reading. How utterly stupid.
9.
Basic literacy amounts to nothing more than the ability to accurately read words out loud and
then spell them correctly. This is the good old fashioned foundation literacy that has existed
since at least the time of Moses and his contemporaries in the Hebrew, Arabic, Ancient Greek
and Roman civilisations of some 3,200 years ago. This is also the type of literacy which all
Australian parents do want for their children but which all Australian governments have
failed to test systematically for at least 77 years.
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To quite efficiently teach this type of basic literacy, you really only need 2 things: the will to
do it, and the very simple and even very primitive materials to do it with. Moses and his
contemporaries did prove this some 3,200 years ago. Todays world has access to basic
literacy only because these ancient cultures succeeded in doing, with the most primitive of
resources, what all our modern Australian education systems have been unable to do with
their massive amounts of money and modern technology. The ancients had it right. Weve got
it wrong.
With very simple materials, most people who can already read and spell can actually test and
teach the literacy basics too. There is absolutely nothing that is difficult about systematically
testing basic phonic skills or basic read-aloud skills or spelling: Nor is there anything hard at
all about teaching these skills when you use the properly designed phonic materials to teach
them with. And when any student has control over these 3 basic skills alone he effectively
does have full control over his literacy basics. Who on earth would not want all students to
have a full control of this type?
No official and systematic testing of the 3 literacy basics will forever ensure that Australian
schools, colleges and workplaces too will never be equipped to systematically teach them.
This is not a gratuitous biblical style prophesy. The testing of the 3 literacy basics is a reality
that stretches back in a number of cultures for at least three millennia. An excerpt from one of
my recent papers explains.
About 3,200 years ago Moses and his contemporaries with the Hebrew, Ancient
Greek, Arabic, and Roman alphabets all got it right when it came to the
teaching of the literacy basics. And they all got it right too, with the most
primitive of resources. Literacy exists today only because they got it right.
In particular, when it comes to the learning of basic reading and spelling skills in
todays schools nothing at all has been changeable since the reported parting of
the Red Sea. When it comes to basic reading for example, todays children have
all still got to visually organise groups of letters and words and then hook them
up to meaning in much the same manner that the students of Moses did.
And when it comes to basic writing too, all students, even in the year 2014, still
have to perceptually recall and record the very precise sequences of letters in
exactly the same precise way that Mohammed, Socrates and Virgil had to with
Arabic, Ancient Greek and Latin respectively.
Since the time of these ancient patriarchs, written accuracy from generation to
generation has been ensured only by the consistent testing of students for errors
and the persistent correcting of these in every essential detail . In precisely this
manner, basic literacy and its alphabets have managed to survive to this present
day.
Most modern school education systems overseas have stopped playing games with whole
language literacy teaching methods and with the consequent literacy welfare of students and
workers. In the better systems, their primary English curricula especially have returned to the
carefully pre-planned testing and teaching of phonics or the alphabetic principle for the
duration of primary education.
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23
Basic reading and writing with all of the worlds alphabetic languages involves mastery of
the alphabetic principle as a matter of the very first priority. In the simplest possible terms,
this is the process of matching speech sound values to the letters and letter combinations in
words.
When reading, this principle uses a set of sophisticated but basic perceptual processes . But
when writing, the principle uses even more complex processes of recall that necessitate that
the intricate perceptions (which previously operated whilst reading) were no less than precise,
and this every letter of the way . I cover this issue quite fully on my website.
24
New words and new expressions from the newspeak jargon of newer versions of the 1994
OBE experiment still spread confusion throughout Australia, without telling teachers about
the specific content that needs to be taught to each separate year group in the primary school.
Examples of these useless new word replacements for the useful old words are: linguistic
structures
linguistic features
interact
interpret
band
strand
visual text
multimodal .
In 2007 Kevin Donnelly encapsulated this shift in language communication perfectly with the
one word that he called edubabble. Edubabble functions to radically break down
communication among all participants in the basic education process. In the long run, it
creates only mischievous confusion and often leads Australian parents into home education or
the non government school systems. As Donnelly pointed out at that time, in the previous 12
years, enrolments in government schools had risen by some 2% but in non government
schools by 22%.
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11.
The facts and the figures reported in this submission have been presented honestly and
clearly: competent basic literacy teaching throughout Australia is the central victim in a truly
destructive and massive national swindle. The origins of this swindle have been clear. They
have been bureaucratically initiated, bureaucratically manipulated and bureaucratically
maintained against every atom of basic teaching sense for over 30 years.
Since the early 1980s, the systematic testing and teaching of basic literacy skills in Australian
classrooms has been ruled from the top and ruined at the roots by a nation wide alliance of
ideologically compatible organizations. For most of this time, this alliance has comprised a
significant number of professional groups that were (and still are) all government owned,
government controlled or government sponsored to greater or lesser degrees.
Some of these groups have local offices for central organization in each Australian state or
territory. Most too, liaise with the school book industry and with the curriculum advisory
authorities of local state government and non government school jurisdictions. Whenever
issues of literacy curriculum have desperately needed change (as has been the case
throughout Australia for 3 decades) this group has functioned as an impregnable alliance of
ideologues. Over the last three decades the alliance has included the following organizations.
ACARA
CC
ACER
ACDE
AEU
ACSA
ALEA
LEC
ACAL
PETA
AATE
ACTA
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removed entirely from Australian schools, systematic testing and teaching for
age level performance in: read-aloud skills, spelling, dictation, grammar,
punctuation and even the English alphabetic principle.
purged the words wrong and test from most literacy curriculum documents but
not the words right, correct, evaluation and assessment.
ignored the truly vast volumes of disciplined research evidence against their
decisions for at least 4 entire primary school generations of Australian school
children.
remained unrepentant when their flawed social agendas were revealed again
and again by the research to be destructive of both the literacy levels as well
as the levels of personal self esteem of our school children and workplace
employees.
Such phenomenal destruction to the very roots of Australias basic literacy teaching could
never have occurred without strong and consistent support from teacher unions and office
worker unions alike. Without the support of the foregoing professional organizations, this
clearly planned destruction could not have been disseminated nationally by the two main
planning bodies, the national Curriculum Corporation (now replaced by ACARA) and the
Australian Council for Educational Research.
Finally, the Australian Council of Deans of Education especially, is implicated in the crime
of having trained nearly 3 decades of new literacy teachers that have been destined, precisely
by their new training, to fail more school students than ever before.
A concerted effort to pull down standards ?
If this sounds too much like another conspiracy theory lets just face a very simple political
fact right here and now: in your knowledge, which Australian political party in history has
ever once promised before an election to:
remove the word test from all main English literacy curriculum documents in
the country? And this for both school students and workplace employees.
for a period of over 20 years, remove too, virtually all mention of the English
alphabetic principle, more commonly known as phonics, from these same
documents for teaching school children to spell and read?
remove age level English spelling skills from all literacy testing agendas for
both students and workers nationally ?
27
For the last 30 years there has been nothing that anyone could do to block the arrival of the
next step in the step-by-step dumb down of the spelling and reading skills of our students at
all levels. The alliance of government sponsored ideologues that we have just described, was
always in position to manipulate the knowledge, value judgments and indeed ideologies of
the elected Ministers for Education at the top.
Only a concerted effort by a significant number of ideologically aligned groups could have so
successfully achieved literacy destruction like this throughout the nation. So lets now join up
the dots and make a few simple observations that illustrate both the powerlessness and the
misguided trust that Australian Ministers for Education have had in their educational
bureaucracies whether at federal, state or territorial levels: These are those observations:
For example: Both the 1982 Australia wide mandates for already discredited
whole language methods as well as the 1993-94 mandates for un-trialled
outcomes based education guidelines were both foregone conclusions even
well before representatives of the impregnable alliance presented their
finished products for the mere formality of Ministerial signatures.
Consider also: When in 2004, Dr Brendan Nelson, the then federal Minister for
Education, commissioned the first ever national inquiry into the teaching of
literacy in Australian schools, this inquiry did not even try to investigate the
spelling of our school children. And spelling will forever comprise 50% of
literally every literacy task, both at school and at work, despite the apparent
disapproval of Australias ruling impregnable alliance.
I simply cannot
believe that Dr Nelson knew beforehand that his inquiry into literacy teaching
nationwide would start by so blatantly eradicating at least half of the
comprehensive scope that was so very badly needed.
I have no doubt that Australias Ministers for Education at all levels still see
schools as simply schools, but the evidence that I have presented in this
submission is quite clear. The ruling ideological alliance that seems to have
dictated to these Ministers for Education, has actually treated our schools much
more like experimental guinea-piggeries for 30 years.
Its a clear reality: the ruling alliance of educational ideologues could never
even once have forewarned our Ministers for Education about the full array of
cons that were to accompany the pros.
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Once the above members of the ideological or impregnable alliance had been selected as the
majority part of the National Committee of Inquiry, the outcome of the inquiry was largely a
foregone conclusion. And the rest of the alliance could breathe a sigh of relief. The reason? It
had been these very same organizations and their associates in the alliance who, some years
earlier, had actually spearheaded both the design and national dissemination of Australias
problem literacy curricula in the first place.
Astute organization, huh?
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12. Downloadable programs provide the ONLY way to practically assist a nation
Whether for the sake of money or ideology or both, the ruling bureaucratic alliance for basic
literacy teaching in Australia is ruled by the insurmountable problems that are associated with
the outcomes based education and whole language ideologies. It continues even today to be
dominated by a tyranny for the new and esoteric but disdain toward the reliable and
traditional.
The alliance for example, promotes a modern but largely vacuous array of literacy
education concepts such as cultural literacy, critical literacy, computer literacy, visual
literacy, syncretic literacy, multi literacies (sic) and multiple literacies too. But this same
alliance has been diametrically opposed for decades to the systematic testing and teaching of
the good old fashioned literacy with its traditional phonics, spelling and read-aloud skills.
And its these 3 old fashioned skills alone that our schools and their students and parents
need above all else for their literate survival with personal self esteem into the future . . . and
for English scholarship as well.
A most serious threat to almost all school subjects
The irrational revocation of all basic traditional teaching wisdom within our literacy curricula
has indeed been a sustained phenomenon since the early 1980s. And there has been no
independent government sponsored vetting system in place to temper the destructive
fanaticism that has been so apparent.
Our Ministers for Education, and these alone, are the only ones who have been given the
elected authority and can ethically say thus-far-no-further to an ideologically extremist
public service establishment that has deliberately continued for so long with destructive
errors. It is this command that must be given by all of Australias Ministers for Education to
those bureaucracies who have very largely betrayed their trust since the early 1980s: truly a
matter for bi-partisan parliamentary front benches everywhere.
ACARA: adamantly of no value to basic literacy teaching in Australia
Australias national curriculum authority has been operating for about 4 years. It was
originally called the National Curriculum Board but is now called the Australian Curriculum
Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). In its first 12 months of operation the
authority published 2 documents on English teaching totalling around 10,000 words.
Even in these early documents, a simple word count of the key words revealed the beginning
of ACARAs currently disastrous national literacy curriculum. In this early documentation
phonics and the alphabet were mentioned a total of only 4 times, spelling was mentioned 5
times, testing was actually mentioned 11 times but the expressions word recognition or read
aloud skills both scored 0.
Over a period of 2 years, I wrote frequently with expressly clear analyses to warn the
Minister and ACARA about inevitable problems. I was reluctantly granted a brief meeting
with two officials on one occasion, but nobody wanted to sit and rationally discuss the very
real problems with me. And as we saw, from my analysis of the December 2012 version of
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the national primary English curriculum, ACARA went on to exhibit only an embarrassing
level of incompetence nationally. How on earth did our national literacy education experts
manage to become so collectively deaf?
An analysis of the membership of ACARAs carefully selected English advisory panel will
shed some light on how this highly educated but impractically qualified group produced such
a blithely misinformed convolution and called it an English curriculum. A check on the 26
members of the advisory panel for ACARAs English curriculum division, reveals a heavy
preference in favour of persons who are also most likely to be members of the impenetrable
ideological alliance that I described in section 11 of this submission.
For its first two years, ACARA was also headed by the globally distinguished Dr Peter Hill
who had had a long standing reputation in Australia and internationally for his strong support
of both outcome based education curricula and whole language literacy teaching programs.
Coincidence or design ? All things considered, ACARA does now have the indelible image
of a very carefully selected ideologically united cloister: utterly useless for any simple basic
teaching projects that do not adhere to the central tenets of their globally discredited theories.
You be the judge: without a radical change in what is now clearly the current and destructive
ideology of ACARA, Australian schools and workplaces will not ever see the new type of
simple basic literacy teaching programs that they do so clearly need: not ever.
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If you dont have the simple practical teaching materials to back up your talk with then your
talk has been wasted. This lesson applies just as much to fixing the literacy problems of an
entire country as it does to fixing the problem of your next door neighbor or your next door
neighbors child.
Downloadable teaching programs provide the only way to practically assist a nation
The Abbott administration must seriously investigate the idea of cost free downloadable
tutoring programs that are simple and viable both for teachers in the classroom and parents at
home. Most of Australias estimated 9.5 million students and workers with basic literacy
problems will end up being helped mainly by those relatives, friends, lovers and volunteers
who have access to cost free or near cost free materials.
A clientele of 9.5 million students and workers with literacy problems will most certainly
require on deck every literate hand from every literate age group throughout the country. And
any tutoring materials that are not free, or almost completely free, will simply not be cheap
enough .
If a mechanic without simple mechanical tools cannot fix your car, then a parent, friend or
teacher cannot help the spelling and reading skills of a normal stream student or fix the
problems of a literacy impaired student without simple teaching tools.
Most of the necessary such teaching tools can be downloaded fully. Other necessary tools
that require minimal hard copy can be made available at universally low or impulse buyer
prices, even for those surviving on social security benefits. Only in this way will it be
possible to viably extend simple and well tutored help to all those Australian students and
workers who need it.
Downloadable programs for Australian parents and teachers are necessary in 4 areas
1. Downloadable traditional and standardised tests.
One of the main outcomes of 30 years of exclusively whole language literacy teaching in our
schools, is that none of our main education systems have routinely used standardized or agelevel tests of basic read-aloud skill, basic spelling skill, basic phonic skill and reading
comprehension.
I cannot forewarn more bluntly: without this specific type of very simple systematic testing,
no-one at all can even start to systematically teach spelling and reading to literacy impaired
students and workers. This type of test is essential with every student if we want to be simple
and efficient about discovering just where we need to begin re-teaching them in basic literacy
skills.
A comprehensive selection of now rather old tests of this type is available on my not-forprofit website (www.literacytesting.com) A careful rummage through the test archives of
most Australian school systems would certainly uncover a few more tests that are comparable
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to these in their usefulness. And such a rummage should be done immediately. We should
even expand our search efforts into the test archives of successful overseas education systems
as well. There is no doubt that unsurpassable and copyright free testing wisdom in basic
spelling and reading skills, still lurks in departmental archives everywhere. We only have to
go looking for it.
2. Downloadable content literacy curricula
A content literacy curriculum is merely a literacy curriculum that actually tells teachers what
to try and teach to students at each year level of compulsory school education. An effective
content literacy curriculum at primary level (more or less like the statutory ones used in
England since at least 1998) will tell teachers what to teach in phonics, spelling, grammar,
and more, in a semester by semester manner for each year of primary school education.
Current Australian provisions for primary English curricula are ludicrous indeed. No
Australian teacher, faced with a government primary school class, is effectively instructed
by a content literacy curriculum as to what exactly it is that she should to try to teach to the
children in that year. In this sense, despite the $40 billion spent annually on Australian
education, there exists no literacy teacher at all who is actually instructed by an explicit
government sponsored job description.
A valid question arises: how many of our state and territorial literacy teachers would adopt a
content literacy curriculum that was written in Canberra? A second question is: does the
leadership in Canberra possess anyone at all with the type of very practical qualifications, in
the teaching of phonics and spelling, that are necessary to design such a curriculum?
Both questions are legitimate: even the briefing papers that the office of the federal Minister
for Education originally handed to the national Literacy Inquiry Committee of 2005, made
no clear feature of the words phonics, spelling or test. Yet literacy does not even exist without
at least phonics and spelling, and relevant testing is quite impossible unless you set out test
relevantly.
Fortunately, the concept of downloadable programs can just bypass most of these problems,
and, into the bargain, get all necessary and practical information about the testing and
teaching of phonics, spelling and reading through to parents at home, teachers at school and
supervisors in the workplace.
3. Downloadable code emphasis or traditional phonic programs
The summary facts about systematically pre-programmed phonic teaching systems are that by
the end of elementary school education, children are over 3 years ahead for age in read-aloud
skill and 1 year 8 months ahead for age in spelling : and this regardless of sex, wealth and
ethnic differences too.
The UK House of Commons in 2005 also noted that pre- programmed and systematic phonic
programs produced near a 100% success rate, even in schools that were situated in areas
deemed unlikely to achieve near to normal success. Cost free downloadable programs of a
systematic and finely graded type, would indeed go a long way toward enabling this type of
instruction to start happening in most homes, schools and workplaces throughout Australia:
and in a relatively short time too.
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An old fashioned pencil and paper spelling test is the quickest, easiest, cheapest,
most accurate and informative literacy test of the lot to design and administer to any
group.
There is no ambiguity in marking a spelling test: only fully correct answers are
marked correct, and literally any competent speller is fully qualified do the marking.
Only 40 simple test words at a time would be needed for each year level of the
primary school. Appropriately researched year by year spelling lists for Australian
primary schools are on my website.
Teachers, parents and the Australian public would be presented with often
embarrassing age level facts about accurate writing, delivered both into homes as
well as schools for the first time ever.
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Virtually all students who can spell well for age have no problems with the other
areas of basic literacy learning. Most of those that cant spell well for age usually
need only more good teaching on the 3 core skills.
A simple spelling test is the most efficient screening test for literacy levels
with any new group of students. Other types of literacy tests can then be given
to the underachievers in spelling
Such a national spelling project could effectively lead to the first ever nation wide
diagnosis in the teaching of the 3 core literacy skills.
Test scores could be linked directly to the levels within downloadable tutoring
programs. Relevant home tutoring could begin just about anywhere where there
happens to be a PC.
Most importantly, current literacy education bureaucrats in all states and territories
would be unable to continue with their 30 year old facade of competence.
Australia does have a literacy crisis that will be alleviated only if its fundamental
cause is widely recognized in the first place, and then tackled with radical, simple and
cheap procedures such as this.
There are no other viable ways to realistically begin fixing the crisis that weve got.
The numbers are far too big.
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